English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Robusto

00:47

@Cerberus What, like bird nests and honeybee hives?

Cerberus

@Robusto And shells, dead plankton.

I'm sure those add up.

And, when you add structures made by plants including ones half decayed, you'll get a tonne more.

Robusto

I'm sure they do. The difference would be that those are natural (Florida is made of such discarded exoskeletons), but I think that misses the point.

Cerberus

shrugs

Robusto

01:00

@tchrist: washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/12/07/…

tchrist

01:25

@Robusto I saw that.

I've just learned that Covid killed a friend of mine in Boulder I've known like 30 years. I'm really angry.

Cerberus

I'm sorry to hear that.

tchrist

He was a physician. Since March he has only ever seen patients via phone call. He was super careful. His wife is fine.

I may not go inside anywhere again before vaccination.

It's really serious here.

Cerberus

@tchrist Do they have any idea where or by whom he was infected?

tchrist

Unimaginable. Notice that even though Colorado ranks #20 in new cases, its new deaths today are quite high in comparison to its peers.

@Cerberus No.

Cerberus

His wife was never infected?

tchrist

01:38

Correct.

Cerberus

The fates are cruel.

Our figures have stopped improving.

Hospitalisations have slowly begun to increase again.

tchrist

Our governor's partner was hospitalized, but the governor never had anything but mild cold symptoms. And he's heavy and in his late 50s, while his spouse is a much thinner man maybe 15 years his junior.

They live just a few miles from here, in rural Boulder County. Normally they eschew the governor's mansion in Denver because of a school-age kids etc.

Cerberus

tchrist

The First Gentleman did go home yesterday.

@Cerberus The bottom one looks too familiar. We see that around here too much.

Cerberus

Decreasing, then increasing again?

tchrist

01:42

Yes.

People aren't careful enough, etc.

Cerberus

The first graph is daily new hospitalisations, I think. The second one is cumulative, but excluding intensive care.

tchrist

The Colorado hospitalization numbers are lower now than they had been, which is some surprise given that there are so many full hospitals in the country. But maybe ours are just dying.

Cerberus

@tchrist Yeah.

tchrist

We have more than 100,000 hospitalized in this country. Many, many more will die.

Cerberus

@tchrist I've heard many cases where live-in partners were never infected at all.

tchrist

01:45

@Cerberus I have a boyhood friend from home who now lives in Tennessee who's one of those "long haul" cases. But his wife never got it.

Cerberus

A boyhood friend, that's cute.

@tchrist Interesting.

It's partly luck.

My colleague's girlfriend got it from her sister.

But he was not infected.

tchrist

@Cerberus Once upon a time it was. :)

Cerberus

My boyfriend's friend is remains uninfected by his live-in boyfriend.

tchrist

New Colorado deaths. Don't like curve.

Cerberus

Hmm.

Let's hope vaccines will arrive soon.

tchrist

01:47

Spring.

For me and mine.

Cerberus

OK.

They are planning to start on the fourth of January here.

But only with healthcare workers.

Then the old and the weak.

tchrist

Well yes, but I'm not someone with contact with covid people. Only those such will get it at first.

Cerberus

So I'm hoping my parents might be vaccinated before Spring.

tchrist

Well the very old, the instituionalized.

The weak and infirm are unlikely to get it before then. Unfortunately.

Cerberus

We shall see.

tchrist

01:50

There's to be very little of Pfizer vaccine available. We'll have to hold out for others.

Cerberus

I'm hoping we can have a catch-up Christmas Eve in Spring.

tchrist

I heard someone from the UK pronounce vaccine as though it were vaxin.

Cerberus

Hmm.

Someone, that doesn't sound wrong to me.

I always have to think before I spell it.

Is it vaccin or vaccine?

tchrist

They aren't vaxin people with the new vaxin yet.

Cerberus

Oh, as a verb?

tchrist

01:52

No, the noun.

Cerberus

Now that I would not say.

OK.

In Dutch, it's vaccin, pronounced 100% the French way.

tchrist

It rhymes with unseen.

Ultimate stress.

The Brit hit the penult and quit.

Cerberus

In Dutch, it rhymes with salle-de-bain.

tchrist

John? :)

Cerberus

VAKsin?

I suppose he would.

Robusto

01:54

@tchrist Understandable.

tchrist

@Cerberus Yes, that was the trouble.

Cerberus

@tchrist Who?

tchrist

@Cerberus My good friend Lou, lord of all bathrooms.

Cerberus

@tchrist Perhaps you have solved a problem I never knew I had except for a vague sense of unease.

@tchrist No idea.

tchrist

@Cerberus salle-de-bain as in bathroom as in loo as in john as in potty.

Cerberus

01:56

I've subconsciously taught myself to pronounce vak-seen, where I expected a different pronunciation. Perhaps I have let American pronunciation override British.

@tchrist Ohh.

I'd prefer not to have the cabinet inside the sdb, though.

tchrist

@Cerberus No, most Brits say vaccINE like we do. Just this one old and heavily accented Bristolian rural gent.

Cerberus

Hmm.

tchrist

Maybe rural Bristolian gent. Adjectives disorder me.

Cerberus

Howjsay says: VAKseen, American vakSEEN.

@tchrist Yeah, I never think about the order, and I could never fully 'feel' the order praescribed in one of our most popular posts.

tchrist

OED says: Brit. /ˈvaksiːn/,/ˈvaksɪn/,/ˈvaksʌɪn/, U.S. /vækˈsin/

Cerberus

01:59

Ah.

tchrist

Wow, they talk weird.

Cerberus

But that a?

That does not sound right?

tchrist

No kidding.

Cerberus

howjsay.com/how-to-pronounce-vaccine

tchrist

I don't have that phoneme.

Cerberus

02:00

That may be an error in the OED, or some notation unknown to me.

tchrist

It's a front vowel like æ though.

Just not the same.

It's a weird notation.

Cerberus

Yes.

I would write æ for British.

tchrist

I do.

Cerberus

Of course -ʌɪn sounds horrible, but that is another issue.

tchrist

Rather.

Cerberus

02:01

Could be uneducated, speak-as-you-spell pronunciation.

tchrist

comme une vache espagnole

Cerberus

Perhaps they also say washing machʌɪn.

Indeed.

tchrist

You know, like the vatchy.

So it was /ˈvaksɪn/ I heard that sounded weird.

We may have 10,000 deaths a day by Christmas.

Robusto

@tchrist Vachement bien.

tchrist

> 17 states back Texas lawsuit calling on Supreme Court to intervene in presidential race

What the fuck is wrong with this country.

Cerberus

02:13

But not Georgia, probably?

@tchrist I suppose unaccented sin and seen may not sound that different?

tchrist

Mayyyybe.

Cerberus

Estimated total number of infectious people.

Now 87,000.

Down from almost double that in October.

Robusto

> When (not if) the Supreme Court slams the door on this contemptuous Texas case, the collateral damage will be to the reputation of the courts.

nbcnews.com/think/opinion/…

> None of the claims Texas is pursuing are incapable of being addressed by the lower courts; they’ve just been rejected by those tribunals. None of the injuries Texas is invoking as justification would be unique to Texas. And the factual allegations Texas makes in its filings are both preposterous on their face and have been soundly discredited by every court that has considered similar allegations to date.

> All of this may help to explain why the Texas solicitor general — the state’s leading advocate before the Supreme Court — did not sign onto any of the filings in this new suit.

> In other words, when (not if) the Supreme Court slams the door on this Texas case, the president’s critics will (once again) claim victory, the president and his defenders will (once again) move the goal posts (to Congress, one suspects) and the collateral damage will be to the institutional reputation of the courts — and the idea that the courts are anything other than another lever to be pulled in partisan political squabbles.

tchrist

02:32

@Cerberus One in every 40 here in Colorado.

Cerberus

@tchrist Oh, that is a lot.

It's one in a hundred and ninety-five here.

tchrist

> In El Paso, hospitals reported that just 13 of 400 intensive care beds were not occupied last week. In Fargo, N.D., there were just three. In Albuquerque, there were zero.

@Robusto Stay home. Or at least, never go inside or be around people.

Robusto

@tchrist Yeah. Easier to say than to do. One runs out of essentials.

tchrist

@Robusto I know. I just got off the phone begging my parents to only get curbside pickups or home delivery no matter what.

More Americans perished today than on 9/11. It's a massacre.

Robusto

Indeed.

tchrist

02:45

Every. Single. Day.

Cerberus

@tchrist I tried that in March. But it's no use.

They babysit my nieces, and my friend's children (on different days each week).

At least everyone involves works from home.

But all children meet other children at daycare.

tchrist

They would not let me sister visit with her son this past weekend.

Cerberus

And primary school.

tchrist

And now they're sick, so they were right.

Cerberus

Oh, ye sister.

Sister and son are sick?

tchrist

02:48

Not with covid. Some GI bug.

Cerberus

GI?

tchrist

gastro-intestinal

Cerberus

Ah.

tchrist

vomiting, fever over 100

Cerberus

I thought 100 was body temperature?

tchrist

02:49

He got it wrong.

Cerberus

I see.

Time to switch, then.

tchrist

97 to 99 is body temperature. 37C±0.5

Robusto

@Cerberus Said the Lilliputian to the resident of Blefescu.

Cerberus

Weird.

@Robusto Something from Swift?

But the whole world uses the SI-based Celsius scale.

Robusto

@Cerberus Yes.

tchrist

02:53

@Cerberus I know it's hard for you to understand why nobody cares about that here.

Robusto

Which gives us Little Endian and Big Endian byte orders in programming.

Cerberus

@tchrist If only a body did!

Robusto

Celsius temps are fine for science, but almost useless for human temp ranges.

tchrist

@Cerberus It's impossible to care that people 5,000 miles away count their money in bottlecaps.

Robusto

Why can't we use each where it's appropriate? Where I live, we do.

Cerberus

02:55

Apparently, Fahrenheit is useless for body temperature.

And 0 Fahrenheit is useless as well.

tchrist

Lies, both times.

Robusto

@Cerberus Closer than Celsius is.

Cerberus

Hehe.

@Robusto But not close enough!

Robusto

Close enough for rock and roll.

Cerberus

0 freezing and 100 boiling is super useful in daily life.

It's also exact.

tchrist

02:56

When your gauge is at 6 o'clock it's freezing and when it's at 12 o'clock it's boiling. See how clever that is?

Cerberus

And it converts very easily into Kelvin.

tchrist

The big hand goes from pointing straight down to pointing straight up.

Cerberus

We don't have hands.

Only big paws.

Robusto

@Cerberus Fahrenheit is exact. It's just a different scale. Are you so limited that you can only use one system of measurement? What happens when you have to talk about stars being light years distant? Geezis, man, listen to yourself.

tchrist

Parsex.

Cerberus

02:58

Yeah, light years are super annoying.

Probably invented by someone who didn't use metric distances.

Robusto

And don't even get me started on energy measurements.

tchrist

Astronomical Units.

Solar Masses

Cerberus

> The light-year is a unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equivalent to about 9.46 trillion kilometres

Robusto

@Cerberus They were invented by someone who knew that to express stellar distances in meters was useless.

Cerberus

Just use something like ten trillion kilometres when you want to indicate a very long distance.

Or just petametres, whatever.

It would be so much easier to convert.

Only use light years when you really have to.

Robusto

03:01

You think your system is so modern, but in your arguments it looks hidebound.

Cerberus

At least the year and the speed of light are somewhat useful units.

We should have revised the time system when we had the chance.

I'm reading Pro Sexto Roscio by Cicero with one of my pupils.

Robusto

Now you're going off the deep end. Napoleon tried to make a metric day, and nobody bought it.

tchrist

The planets in our solar system have average distances from the sun that are measured in AUs, where Earth's own average distance from the sun is by definition is 1.000000 AU.

Cerberus

In it, a messenger drives ten nightly hours to report the murder of Roscius pater to his enemies.

But we do not know the season, so we have no idea how long ten hours are!

tchrist

@Cerberus What's Sexto in metric?

Cerberus

03:03

Because the night was divided into twelve hours, no matter how long.

So wintry nightly hours are much, much longer than summery ones.

tchrist

Time is relative.

Cerberus

No doubt useful to the Romans.

But terrible for us readers.

tchrist

@Cerberus Yes, we do, it's five sixths of the night!

Cerberus

Indeed.

tchrist

In a very human way, that's really what matters.

Cerberus

03:04

We know how far Away Ameria was from Rome.

tchrist

In leagues, no doubt.

Cerberus

But we do not know whether he travelled fast or really fast.

In thousands of paces, in the text.

tchrist

Where a league = one hour's march.

So three miles each, on average. If it is not too hilly.

Cerberus

I think it's fifty.

So he travelled fifty thousand paces in ten nightly hours.

tchrist

Wait wait.

It's five thousand feet per Roman mile.

So 50,000 divided by 5,000 is 10.

Cerberus

03:07

Five thousand?

> et cum post horam primam noctis occisus esset, primo diluculo nuntius hic Ameriam venit; decem horis nocturnis sex et quinquaginta milia passuum cisiis pervolavit, non modo ut exoptatum inimico nuntium primus adferret, sed etiam cruorem inimici quam recentissimum telumque paulo ante e corpore extractum ostenderet.

Cicero is a nice writer.

He paints the picture vividly.

tchrist

> decem horis nocturnis sex et quinquaginta milia passuum

And he counts well.

Cerberus

Oh, it was 56,000.

tchrist

Yep.

Thank goodness he didn't write that in Roman numerals. :)

Cerberus

> The distance was indirectly standardised by Agrippa's establishment of a standard Roman foot (Agrippa's own) in 29 BC,[9] and the definition of a pace as 5 feet. An Imperial Roman mile thus denoted 5,000 Roman feet. Surveyors and specialised equipment such as the decempeda and dioptra then spread its use.[10]

In modern times, Agrippa's Imperial Roman mile was empirically estimated to have been about 1,617 yards (1,479 m) in length.[11]

@tchrist They never do; they write numbers in full, just as we do.

tchrist

Unless you are a child.

The children adore their digits.

Cerberus

03:10

So it was 82 km he travelled.

8.2 km/hour.

tchrist

@urnonav Well, since you asked so nicely.... 😉 “It is our joy and our delight to extend to both you and your lady wife the honor of an invitation to attend the graduation ceremony of our belovèd son Vernon Ebenezer Milton-FitzReine on Sunday the Twenty-First Day of May in the Year of our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Thirty-Seven at Three Hours of the Afternoon, with formal luncheon to follow in the pavilion.” 😉 — tchrist ♦ Nov 2 '19 at 15:53

Cerberus

The roads were good, but not as good as ours.

tchrist

Five miles an hour is a good clip.

It means you're in a hurry.

Normally people walk just three; hence the league.

Cerberus

But the hour could be 45 of our minutes, or 90.

Give or take.

tchrist

There is that.

Cerberus

03:14

Or is it 40 and 80?

tchrist

If you take my five-to-three ratio you could figure out what time of the year it is.

Cerberus

Probably.

So it could be between 5.5 and 10.5 km/h, perhaps.

On horseback, praesumably.

tchrist

Oh I see.

Cerberus

Or I think in some kind of chariot or carriage.

tchrist

What fancy words the Romans had for carts!

Cerberus

03:18

Oh, cisiis, "a light two-wheeled vehicle, a cabriolet".

I think it was "several months after the Kalends of June", so it could be in later summer to early winter.

We do not know.

tchrist

“If you’re living in a place where there’s no I.C.U. bed for 100 miles, you have to be incredibly careful about the social interaction that you allow the community to take,” she said.

Mitch

Base 10 units are stupid

bushels pecks gallons quarts pints cups is all...

binary

much more universal

tchrist

Of course.

A gallon is a kibidram you know: 1024.

Mitch

and inches feet yards miles easy is mixed base 2 and 3, easy to divide by

but it is convenient that a cubic millimeter of water is a gram.

tchrist

A mile is 320 rods.

So a mile is 5*2**6 rods.

Mitch

03:29

a light-nanosecond is roughly 1 foot

so now I now how far it is to Alpha Centauri in feet

tchrist

A mile is also 8 furlongs long, so 2**3.

And a mile is 80 chains long, so 5*2**4.

Mitch

1 candela in SI units is equivalent to the brightness of...

...

..

.

wait for it

One candle

science is awesome

tchrist

Except under water. There a mile is 880 fathoms deep, so 11*5*2**4. Oh well, don't go underwater. Numbers too confusing there.

Mitch

10 factorial seconds is exactly 6 weeks

tchrist

I could second that.

Mitch

03:34

pi seconds equals one nano-century

Take -that-, metric system

It's the height of narcissism and juvenality... puerileness... youthalcy... childishness to pattern your scientific measuring system on counting with your own fingers.

tchrist

I told you that youths are obsessed with their digits.

Mitch

or mid 18th c Frenchmen

the number of hours in a week is the order of the automorphism group of the Fano plane

kind of a convenient mnemonic

CowperKettle

03:58

Mitch

@CowperKettle Is that an opinion poll of the populace, or is it some individuals in the government?

CowperKettle

@Mitch I don't know. It's just something from Twitter. Could be false.

Mitch

@CowperKettle /r/MapPorn has lots of similar maps that are fun to look at but then are hard to trust on inspection.

not that they are wrong...just hard to trust.

I mean Iran and Saudi Arabia are the largest threats to -each other-, at a certain level, but I would think that the large majority of people in the two countries would (along with Egypt) immediately say 'Israel' if asked.

Faheem Mitha

06:23

@NiharKarve People get paid to write comments. It's a well known thing here. Sometimes oddly described as the BJP IT Cell. I prefer the RSS Troll Army. That conjures up a suitably horrific Tolkienesque image of a horde of shambling monsters. Orc Army would be even better, but probably too obscure a reference.

Johan Larsson

06:49

@FaheemMitha how is the strike situation?

Faheem Mitha

@JohanLarsson About the same, I think. I don't know anything more than anyone else.

Johan Larsson

Do you live in india?

Faheem Mitha

The situation is at a predictable impasse. The farmers aren't backing down, because they can't afford to. And the govt (if you want to call it that) is run by incompetent, arrogant fascist idiots. Notably the loathsome bearded freak who pretends to run the country. (Excuse ranting.)

@JohanLarsson Bombay, India. Yes.

Johan Larsson

please rant, refreshing to read about something other than trump :)

Faheem Mitha

I'm not sure how many more enemies these people can afford to make, but they don't seem worried. Perhaps they are planning to transition to a dictatorship model.

@JohanLarsson I don't think you mean that. Are you in the USA, then?

Johan Larsson

06:54

constitution refactoring

Faheem Mitha

Oh, your profile says Sweden.

theguardian.com/science/2010/jun/23/…

This is a very interesting article. I never knew any of this.

Johan Larsson

I swedish media they reported that 10 000 farmers are on strike, that is not quite the same as 250 M

Faheem Mitha

That story is told in a book, as mentioned in the article.

> The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

@JohanLarsson That's a way low number. The number of people who are camping outside Delhi is estimated to be around 300,000.

The strike was nation wide. Involving millions of people, conservatively.

All this hasn't had much impact here yet, but a standoff between the govt and the farmers isn't going to end well.

They get treated very badly as it is. Farmers are constantly killing themselves here.

Johan Larsson

I think farmers have among the highest suicide rates in many parts of the world

@FaheemMitha is the strike over?

CowperKettle

08:01

My WIFI router started failing periodically. It is the Wi-Fi transmitter that seems to be failing, because another computer is connected to the router using a wire, and has no problems with the ping. I run "ping [router] -t" on both computers, and the wired computer shows no missing signals, while the radio-connected computer shows missing signals now and then.

I wonder if there are tools to make sure that it's the router.

Faheem Mitha

08:46

@JohanLarsson The specific one day strike, yes. The general agitation is in the process of escalating, judging from the news I was just reading.

There are now calls for boycotts and such-like.

In case you were wondering, farmers marching on Delhi is not normal. I've never heard of such a thing happening before. Strikes as such, however, are not unusual.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad ip for hostname in body, bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, blacklisted website in body, link at beginning of body, +6 more (731): Keto Ascend:Reviews, Work and Where To Buy? by DavierJoy on english.SE

Faheem Mitha

In other news, Modi and his gang are planning to have a new redesigned parliament, and I think he's planning to have a whole new complex built around it. The price tag I heard was 20,000 crores.

In USD, that's the order of 2.7 billion. A lot of money in India. And obviously taxpayer money. And since the govt is broke, I suppose it will just be added to the deficit.

Also, the Supreme Court called a halt on the proceedings due to litigation against it, which the govt is ignoring. They've done that before, and the Supreme Court did nothing, so I guess they think they can do it again. The Supreme Court only had themselves to blame.

To put this in context, the Indian economy is on the verge of collapse, and half of India is wondering where their next meal is coming from. Modi's corporate friends, however, are doing very well. Notably Mukesh Ambani, now the richest man in Asia. Hie personal wealth more than doubled during the pandemic, I believe.

Most of it is shares of Reliance Industries, I suppose.

See for example thewire.in/government/…

Note the amusing phrase:

> As the apex court allowed the government to go ahead with the foundation stone laying ceremony

What actually happened is that the govt just ignored whatever the Supreme Court was saying, and the Supreme Court asked them what the hell they were doing. They then said that they were having the opening ceremony. The Supreme Court then gave them "permission" to proceed. But the fact is, they were going to do it anyway.

I suppose as the work continues, more "permissions" will be forthcoming.

thewire.in/government/…

Note the revealing and frankly idiotic sentence:

> We have shown deference to you and expected that you will act in a prudent manner. The same deference should be shown to the Court and there should be no demolition or construction,

What kind of judge shows "deference" to the govt?

(Excuse the further ranting.)

Faheem Mitha

09:22

Someone speaks his mind on the matter - thewire.in/government/central-vista-project-delhi-covid-19

Johan Larsson

@FaheemMitha thank you for the information, interesting stuff!

Faheem Mitha

09:47

@JohanLarsson You're welcome.

CowperKettle

09:58

> A hybrid power plant with 41.5 GW worth of wind and solar! For perspective, that is almost as much solar as is currently installed in the entire United States. This hybrid wind and solar power park* is being approved for the Kutch district in the Indian state of Gujarat.

cleantechnica.com/2020/12/06/…

India has so much sunlight, I really hope that solar batteries will help it raise the living standards.

Conrado

10:39

@FaheemMitha Thank you, you are quite good at ranting. It is very informative, and again makes me sorry about the horrible behaviours shown by humanity.

Faheem Mitha

11:27

@CowperKettle Ah yes, that dreadful Adani creature. The other Modi pal. Did you hear of what his companies are doing in Australia? It's a big thing over there. Coal mining, I think.

@Conrado Thanks, appreciate it.

@Conrado It would help if voters were a little more intelligent. But perhaps that's asking too much in a place like India. (Disclaimer: I'm not blaming it entirely on the voters.) And anyway, the other options aren't great either. But definitely less awful.

@CowperKettle en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmichael_coal_mine

CowperKettle

@FaheemMitha But at least there will be more clean energy for India's people

Faheem Mitha

Because 2020 is a really great time to start coal mining, as everyone knows.

@CowperKettle Perhaps.

Adani doesn't care about clean energy. He just wants to make money, and he doesn't care how he does it.

CowperKettle

Coal has a huge thermal capacity and may last well into 2100s

Faheem Mitha

Including bribing India's fascist central govt.

@CowperKettle I was talking about climate change, obviously.

CowperKettle

@FaheemMitha That is sad! I'm afraid that's how it goes with corporations. It's the job for citizens to prevent corporations from doing harm.

Faheem Mitha

11:32

@CowperKettle I just posted a link where his company is starting coal mining in AU, if you really require proof.

CowperKettle

@FaheemMitha We have a huge thermal power plant near Yekaterinburg with Europe's highest smokestack. It burns high-sulfur poor-quality coal from Kazakhstan, and the woods around are all polluted with sulfur.

It starts smelling like rotten eggs as you approach the little town where the plant is located.

People are used to the smell.

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle That's horrible. Are there a lot of respiratory diseases?

CowperKettle

@FaheemMitha Maybe

Reftinskaya GRES

Reftinskaya GRES is the largest solid fuel thermal power plant in Russia. It is situated in Sverdlovsk Oblast,100 km north-east of Yekaterinburg and 18 km from Asbest. Reftinskiy town, which is home to 18,000 people, is situated 2.5 km from the GRES, which produces 20,000 million KWh annually. It has a total installed capacity of 3,800 and heat power— 350 GKh. Coal from Ekibastuz's coal field (16,3 МJ/kilo of calorific value, ash content for moisture-free fuel is 43,3 %) is used as the main fuel and the black oil is used as the starting fuel. GRES produces power with the bar «Outdoor switchgear...

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle Sounds very polluting. What's Russia's status on clean energy?

CowperKettle

@FaheemMitha I don't know

And this is the town of Asbest, where asbestos is mined

Челябинск город, который смог... (аэросъемка, 4К) CHELYABINSK in smog

►

And air pollution in Chelyabisnsk

Faheem Mitha

11:47

@CowperKettle I think I would probably die if I went there. I have long-standing bronchial issues.

Paging Latin experts. I was just watching the first episode of the third season (S3E01) of "The Good Doctor". Shawn tells a joke which goes like this.

Caesar walks into a bar and asks for a martinus. The bartender asks if he means a matini. Caesar says, if I wanted two, I would have ordered two.

Matt E. Эллен

A Town Called Asbestos

►

That one's in Canada

Faheem Mitha

I assume the joke is that "us" is singular in Latin, and "i" is plural. Is that correct?

Is the following sentence correct?

> We have made no provision for these types of expenses.

I was wondering if it should be "provisions" (plural).

Matt E. Эллен

12:03

It can be plural (0 provisions), but I expect provision might also be uncountable as well as countable, so "no provision" is probably fine, too

Faheem Mitha

@MattE.Эллен Provision is uncountable?

Matt E. Эллен

provision

it can be

Faheem Mitha

@MattE.Эллен Ah, so uncountable or countable depending on the context.

Matt E. Эллен

yes

Faheem Mitha

Natural languages, always such fun.

Matt E. Эллен

12:05

:D

Faheem Mitha

I think my usage corresponds to 1.1. in your link. So uncountable, I guess.

@MattE.Эллен Thank you for the assistance.

Matt E. Эллен

you're welcome :)

Faheem Mitha

From the Wikipedia page, it seems that Queensland is planning to subsidize the Adani coal mines. I wonder how Queensland taxpayers feel about this.

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…