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00:00 - 17:0017:00 - 23:00

12:29 AM
Does it mean that we can no longer talk about Trump? That's no fun.
Searching for the right path for all the wrong reasons...
 
1:21 AM
@tchrist: Our numbers continue to drop in NM. Looking like a definite trend.
 
Is everybody happy now?
 
@Cerberus I feel much better now, Dave.
 
 
1 hour later…
2:48 AM
@Cerberus Thank you. I lack words to describe how overcome our hearts were this morning, almost as if we had been released from long years of bondage in durance vile, in darkness unbroken. In that black pit were four hundred thousand souls lost, with countless more still to perish. Our worldly station has been forever diminished, the house of our democracy was sacked, and grave risks remain. But yes, after endless nights of weeping in grief, truly did joy come to us this morning.
 
3:19 AM
@Cerberus I'd be happier if I were taking a nap
@Conrado yeah that stuff is messed up
authorities informed
 
I don't think anybody cares but I really can't tell a Welsh accent. No offense intended but it just sounds British.
Sorry
Also...
You know how like when Italians or French speak English it tends to have a pleasant sound, even if so many thing are mispronounced?
When you hear English speakers (British or American) speaking those other things, it's very cringy.
Like rubber finger nails scraping across a blackboard
 
@Mitch It's because they don't understand that they can't use their English mouth on a Romance tongue.
 
as an aside, do kids these days have any conception whatsoever of fingernails on a blackboard? Blackboards at all? I'm wondering if I do.
but back to how bad the English accent is in other languages...
English doesn't have a monopoly on sounding bad.
Chinese opera almost literally sounds like chewing tinfoil while scraping finger nails on a blackboard.
but back to English.
It sounds like chewing on an overcooked rubbery oyster
It sounds like dogs sniffing each other's butts
 
The problem is that nobody has told them that quite nearly every single sound in Romance is actually different from English, despite using "the same letters". They use their English mouths and it hurts. The entire way you enunciate vowels and consonants is quite different in the "set" of your mouth. Plus of course, they can't fathom syllable timed prosody.
 
3:32 AM
I mean it sounds perfectly fine -in English-.
 
The English mouth is a floppy mouth.
As is the German mouth and the Dutch mouth. Flop flop falwawap.
They don't hold their mouth with the right tension not to let them flop into something else.
 
In pop songs English sounds great.
French sounds -awful- in rock and roll
but maybe that's just repetition
 
No isn't just no in English. It's more like næauw. But in Romance, it's just no.
Floppy mouth.
And of course, non is nasalized in French, so nõ. But it never squishes out the edges.
 
I just learned the other day that, just as there was a northern Gaul Romance (with some versions of Germanic making some slight phonetic and vocab additions) to make modern French...
 
And then they're the way the fricking blow out candles when they talk. You just are NOT supposed to do that!
No puffing out aspirations.
And that's just general stuff. There are a million bugs. And they just cannot HEAR this; I'm not quite sure why.
 
3:37 AM
there -was- a vulgar Latin version in the British Isles before the Saxons came over.
 
Yes, amongst the Bretons.
 
@tchrist That's what those baffles are in front of microphones are for.
 
But that wasn't their native language for most of them. Their native language was a Brythonic Celtic tongue.
@Mitch If you need them in Romance, you're doing it wrong. Teach people how to talk right by putting a candle in front of their mouth.
 
But -somebody- was speaking the northern most Romance. They just didn't continue
 
That's right.
 
3:40 AM
but it's weird. It's not like the Celts died off, they just stopped speaking Celtic.
Or maybe they did die off?
The Mayans did not die off at all.
 
The German/Danish invaders pushed them out of the nearest part of the isle of Britain, drove them west into Kymru.
 
The Yucatan and Guatemalan people -are- Mayans.
 
Yes, and the Welsh are those whom you reference.
Go hang out at the Cardiff Castle; the guides will grouse about it till the cowses come home.
> Welsh national identity emerged among the Britons after the Roman withdrawal from Britain in the 5th century, and Wales is regarded as one of the modern Celtic nations. Llywelyn ap Gruffudd's death in 1282 marked the completion of Edward I of England's conquest of Wales, though Owain Glyndŵr briefly restored independence to Wales in the early 15th century.
That's Owen Glendower to thee and me.
But they forgot Romance. Only the monks of Ireland, of the western Scottish isles, retained knowledge of Latin because they were always copying the Latin text. But they didn't speak it.
British Latin or British Vulgar Latin was the Vulgar Latin spoken in Great Britain in the Roman and sub-Roman periods. While Britain formed part of the Roman Empire, Latin became the principal language of the elite, especially in the more Romanised south and east of the island. However, in the less Romanised north and west it never substantially replaced the Brittonic language of the indigenous Britons. In recent years, scholars have debated the extent to which British Latin was distinguishable from its continental counterparts, which developed into the Romance languages. After the end of Roman...
 
Yeah that
 
3:56 AM
Roman Britain had indoor plumbing with hot and cold running water. They had an educated (literate and numerate) middle class of merchants and bureaucrats.
All that was lost for almost two thousand years once Rome withdrew and the German invaders came.
Hell, they had roads.
Made of poured concrete, laid straight as a skilled Roman surveyor could make them.
Roman roads in Britannia were initially designed for military use, created by the Roman Army during the nearly four centuries (AD 43–410) that Britannia was a province of the Roman Empire. It is estimated that about 2,000 mi (3,200 km) of paved trunk roads (surfaced roads running between two towns or cities) were constructed and maintained throughout the province. Most of the known network was complete by 180. The primary function of the network was to allow rapid movement of troops and military supplies, but it subsequently provided vital infrastructure for commerce, trade and the transportation...
It was civilized. For a little while. Four hundred years.
My mother's patrilineal family is from Herefordshire in the west of the Saxon lands, bordering on the Welsh Marches. I'm assuming they were mostly Saxons not Britons.
It is a green and pleasant land.
The History of Herefordshire starts with a shire in the time of Athelstan (895–939), and Herefordshire is mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 1051. The first Anglo-Saxon settlers, the Magonsætan, were a sub-tribal unit of the Hwicce who occupied the Severn valley. The Magonsætan were said to be in the intervening lands between the Rivers Wye and Severn. The undulating hills of marl clay were surrounded by the Welsh mountains to the west; the Malvern Hills to the east; the Clent Hills of the Shropshire borders to the north, and the indeterminate extent of the Forest of Dean to the south. The...
 
4:15 AM
@Robusto opens airlock
 
There have been people in Britain for longer than it has been an island. Their prehistoric stories are forever lost because they wrote nothing before history began. Caesar brought Britain into history just a couple thousand year ago. Nothing remains from before, and little enough after either, given the wave after wave of invasions from across the narrow sea.
 
@tchrist Hurrah!
Lost–last merger?
 
4:31 AM
It's passing strange to hear the real presidents again, strange to hear them speaking as they are in complete sentences, paragraphs even, and all extemporaneously too, not nonreaders stumbling through some speechwriter's scrawl read from a teleprompter failing on even simple words.
 
4:48 AM
I hope you feel slightly better now than in September.
Sep 19 '20 at 1:22, by tchrist
A year, minimum, and just for that.
Sep 26 '20 at 21:33, by tchrist
We're having interesting weather again today. It's a Fire Danger = "Red Flag" one; very windy and 88 degrees. Some clouds, but more smoke: there's a new fire just over the Wyoming border west of Laramie that blew up yesterday.
 
@Cerberus I didn't have family sick with covid in September.
@Cerberus Yes, I can breathe now.
And I still don't expect much to return to normal this side of September next.
I'm still working on surviving until then.
Well, on surviving until two weeks after whatever the last covid vaccine dose I'm to eventually get. And on trying to help my family survive that long.
I narrowly dodged a bullet on Monday. I haven't talked about it.
But someone else close to me took one.
 
5:05 AM
@tchrist I'm sorry to hear it; is it very serious?
 
They're holding their own but it's unnerving.
 
What kind of bullet?
 
Covid.
 
I see.
Is this the same person, a member of your family?
I know about three people who were probably infected in early March, all untested and mild to fairly mild cases.
That's all, fortunately.
 
My cousin got a new puppy, so every week or two I've been taking the semiresident canine of my domicile over for puppy playtime outside at their house. Was going to go over Monday (it was a holiday here), but then my cousin told me they were still waiting for his wife's covid test result. That I'd known nothing at all of. And that afternoon it came back positive.
One of their kids had had a single day of a "runny nose" the week before. Only sign of it.
 
5:08 AM
The child was not tested?
Could she have been infected some place else?
 
Not immediately.
 
How is she now?
 
The child had gone to school.
She's just a little older than you are, so young and quite healthy. She's ok but it's still early days. Anosmia has set in.
 
Yeah, that's why I'm glad schools and daycare are closed, so my parents can't get it from their grandchildren and my friend's children, whom they also babysit.
@tchrist Ok so try not to worry too much.
 
I'm not, not exactly.
 
5:10 AM
OK.
Many people we know may have been infected without knowing it.
Especially before large-scale testing.
 
This is now the fourth person I've known who has contracted it.
 
Confirmed by tests?
 
Oh yes.
PCR tests.
 
OK.
There is noöne I know in person who was tested positively.
Only the 'colleague's girlfriend' kind of degree.
 
The other family member was a "nephew" (first cousin, once removed), who recovered quickly at age 17.
 
5:12 AM
Good.
My mother was coughing and sneezing at Christmas.
I've probably already told you.
 
I don't believe you have.
That must have been worse than unsettling.
 
She said she gets the common cold all the time from the grandchildren and/or my friend's children, nothing to worry about, no testing.
Yes, quite.
 
What I've learned i that anybody who has any symptom should be immediately tested.
 
And she was also coughing as she was making desserts for my father, my uncle, and my boyfriend.
Yes.
But in my experience old people somehow behave really irresponsibly.
At least my parents and various others I know.
 
Some do, some do not.
 
5:16 AM
Of course.
It isn't representative.
But it's still striking.
Those most at risk seem to take it less seriously, in my circles.
Although I suppose my brother doesn't take it seriously enough either, while some of my uncles do.
 
My family of the generation previous to mine are all all of them holed up at home as I am. But my cousin's mom (my mom's sister in law) gets stir crazy and still goes to this gym now and then.
 
Hmm.
Does she follow all official regulations?
With respect to distance and crowds and ventilation and similar?
 
Sure.
 
That is better than most people.
 
Really? Sounds like people from the Dakotas, the ones with passive death wishes. :/
 
5:20 AM
Hah.
Well, most people don't follow all the rules here.
Gyms are closed now.
 
I guess they aren't scared enough to take care of themselves.
 
But, when they were still open in October, or was it November?—the behaviour you described would have been better than most.
 
My friend here in town died very quickly of it in early December. That's when I decided to take no more chances whatsoever, because clearly what we had been doing wasn't safe enough to survive it.
 
Any idea where he caught it?
 
5:36 AM
I have my suspicion. I think he got it from the air circulating in his office building. He would still go to his private office there. Nobody could be in the building without a mask, in theory, but people took them off in their own offices.
 
 
1 hour later…
6:51 AM
@Cerberus I hope she is better now.
 
 
2 hours later…
8:25 AM
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in link text in body, potentially bad ns for domain in body, potentially bad keyword in body (71): Fantastic FAQ, answers a whole lot of my initial doubts by Dingbest on english.SE
 
8:37 AM
I'm not sure how to structure my sentence in a correct manner.

What I want to express is that I've started something, and will let someone know once it (has?) finish.

Here is an example:

I will be monitoring the progress and I will let you know once it is finished.

So I will be watching/monitoring the progress (I will have a look from time to time to see if its finished) and when I see/acknowledge the process is complete I will let you know.

Hope you get the idea. Thanks in advance!
 
 
2 hours later…
10:35 AM
@Hairi It's unclear which part you want comments on.
The sentence starting with "I will be"? Or the sentence starting with "So I will be"? Or both?
 
10:52 AM
> Dear students! If you take part in street demonstrations on 23 of January, the Institute will consider expelling you.
> Best regards, Lidia Orlova, Manager of the Department "Higher School of Management" at the Financial University of the Government of the Russian Federation
List of students registered in social network groups related to Alexey Navalny
(to be advised to abstain from attending demonstrations on 23 Jan)
Russia's police are visiting all journalists they can, and advise then strongly not to attend the protests on 23 January znak.com/2021-01-21/…
This is what a police state looks like.
Olga Kartavsteva from the city of Omsk stands before the court bulding today, awaitng her hearing. She is charged with calling on people to take part in peaceful protests on 23 Jan.
 
 
2 hours later…
12:30 PM
IsInKnownPosition() should be IsAtKnownPosition() right?
 
"Is it in position?" is grammatically correct
"in position" is probably preferable
 
so not is at position?
it is an { y, z, c } coordinate
 
yeah, so you'd say "is it at a known point?" but "is it in a known position?"
that's not to say you can't say "is it at a known position?", but I think in is more common
 
thanks
 
no problem
 
12:37 PM
pesky little words
 
yeah, preposition are very arbitrary
 
 
2 hours later…
2:11 PM
do you feel like talking?
I feel so.
 
2:27 PM
 
are you hungry?
yes, but I don't feel like eating now. That humans need to eat so often is a trouble. I just ate last night.
 
Writing in 1991 about the generation who fought in WWII, George MacDonald Fraser wrote: "They did not fight for a Britain which would be dishonestly railroaded into Europe against the people's will ..." I'm unaware of the Mechanism of Britain's entrance into the EU. Was it really a hoodwinking?
 
do you hope there is someone doing the laundry for you?
yes, I feel so.
because I want to study something and doing the laundry would take me a lot of time.
 
Is it a lot of time? It only takes to put the clothes in the washer and press the button.
 
I think the landlord should do the laundry for us because they charge us money without doing things for us. Charging us money just because we occupy their land is such a free gain.
 
2:40 PM
@Robusto I can't say I'm an expert, but it was the same as our exit. there was a referendum. people voted to join. we joined.
now, what kind of propaganda there was, I don't know
 
the land belong to the Earth and it's so absurd that we need to pay to occupy it. Animals can occupy land without paying at all. Sometimes I admire them.
Uncontacted people inhabit primordial forests without needing to pay, either.
 
I agree with your point about landlords. they're not a good thing. On the other hand, the analogy to animals breaks down pretty quickly when you think about how animals guard their territories. There is a cost to them.
 
@Bohemianrelativist But animals are in constant danger of being killed by other animals.
> Residents and staff who got the drug had up to a 57% lower risk of getting COVID-19 compared to others at the same facility who got a placebo, the drugmaker said. Among nursing home residents only, the risk was reduced by up to 80%. medicalxpress.com/news/…
 
what the most intolerable is the landlord charges us the period we don't really inhabit.
 
Would you not charge for your property standing idle when it could have been bringing you profit?
 
2:46 PM
I didn't inhabit here until October 20, but they think I should pay the rent from October 1.
 
I would not allow people to own property that they don't use
 
@MattE.Эллен Why? If they bought it and they pay their taxes, why should not they own it?
 
They shouldn't be allowed to buy it if they're not going to use it.
depriving people of shelter for profit is not a good thing
 
I have a laptop I haven't used since 2012. Should it be taken from me?
 
if someone needs it, why not?
 
2:48 PM
@MattE.Эллен So if I need a laptop, I should find an unused one, and steal it?
 
It wouldn't be stealing if the law was changed.
 
That would put a bureaucrat in charge of many properties, and this bureaucrat will profit quite nicely from it.
He would distribute good property for bribes.
 
How would they profit if they cannot profit?
 
@MattE.Эллен Soviet bureaucrats had millions stashed away.
 
anyway, my fantasies all rely on people learning the lessons of the past and seeking to raise each other up equitably
 
2:50 PM
@MattE.Эллен I had a friend whose mother worked in the Soviet grocery store system. He always had actual oranges to eat. While we the common people saw oranges on the shelves once a year.
And she was not a very high official.
She was just working in the distribution.
 
I understand your point. I agree that we are taught greed and competition over kindness. I think that should change too
 
All the plans relying on a bureaucratic system to take away and un-allow people to have private property end up in huge, inefficient and bribe-ridden monstrocities.
 
I don't trust to centralised governments
 
Any bureaucratic system that has power over property will degenerate.
Lenin was amazed at how quickly a whole "red aristocracy" class spang up. It took a couple of years.
 
Only in a system that prioritises competition over kindness
you can't start the change with the government
even though you have to eventually change the government
the government is to uphold the status quo.
 
2:55 PM
In 1992, me and my dad went to play tennis to a sanatorium operated previously by KGB, the Soviet secret police. It was palatial. There were huge redwood standing clocks, you know, with weights, higher than a person's height.
KGB grabbed all the goodies.
I had only seen such clocks before that in movies.
 
I have reported this to the secretary in my department, but she said she will contact the dormitory administration and tell me what can be done when she get further information. But it has been over one month and I have not got her message for this.
I think I should contact her again.
@MattE.Эллен if there are no landlords, will humans compete for lands by brutal force like animals do?
 
@Bohemianrelativist land and homes already exist. it can be distributed equitably according to need.
 
@MattE.Эллен but why do animals need to compete for territory to inhabit? Because there is no sufficient territory for all animals?
 
3:11 PM
@Bohemianrelativist because that's how things turned out
humans can reason and so be different
we just haven't yet
 
@CowperKettle Somehow governments always find sadistic tools who will perform those functions.
2
 
actually I think humans in this world compete for educational positions and professional positions. Not everyone can be provided a position for decent work. Only selected people can be. Unselected people are left to do hunting and gathering to live.
there are some country governments which provide financial aid to people who are disable in some aspect so that they don't need to compete for professional positions. But I wonder if the governments select some from these disable people to aid or help all of them.
but there are criteria to determine if one is disable.
 
@Bohemianrelativist You have just defined the bad parts about 'rent seeking'.
In public-choice theory, as well as in economics, rent-seeking means seeking to increase one's share of existing wealth without creating new wealth. Rent-seeking results in reduced economic efficiency through misallocation of resources, reduced wealth-creation, lost government revenue, heightened income inequality, and potential national decline. Attempts at capture of regulatory agencies to gain a coercive monopoly can result in advantages for rent-seekers in a market while imposing disadvantages on their incorrupt competitors. This is one of many possible forms of rent-seeking behavior....
 
@Bohemianrelativist there is enough to go around, why make people work if they don't need to? so many jobs can be automated. any job that can't should be done by someone who wants to. any automated job should be able to be deautomated for anyone that wants to do it.
 
I don't think everyone can accept any job for livelihood. So if a person cannot get the position they can accept nor be determined as disable qualified for the governmental aid, they are left to hunt and gather.
 
3:25 PM
you mean go to the super market?
 
@MattE.Эллен no, they find ways to self-sustain, for example, they can farm if they have land; they peddle goods around if they can manufacture some kind of goods.
but I think decent work cannot be done on one's own. They must be done by joining some organization.
 
The Billion Tree Tsunami was launched in 2014, by the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), Pakistan, as a response to the challenge of global warming. Pakistan's Billion Tree Tsunami restores 350,000 hectares of forests and degraded land to surpass its Bonn Challenge commitment. The project aimed at improving the ecosystems of classified forests, as well as privately owned waste and farm lands, and therefore entails working in close collaboration with concerned communities and stakeholders to ensure their meaningful participation through effectuating project promotion and extension services...
Cool project.
I came across a satellite photo gif comparing the before and the after, and looks like it worked.
 
Yeah, nice. Unfortunately, a billion trees represents 1/1000 of the trees necessary for sufficient carbon sequestration.
 
3:43 PM
@MattE.Эллен indeed, the government in the country I come from often practices irrational measures or policies.
I think in that country, the wealthiest and leisurely people are those who retire form the governmental organizations besides landlords.
that government stipulates people can retire and get the same salary forever from the governmental organizations after working there for 25 years.
a lot of people have work to do but nobody to pay them, but these people don't need to work but are paid generously.
 
4:25 PM
 
@FaheemMitha Yes, thank you.
 
@tchrist That would be terrible. Was the ventilation system never checked?
 
Her accent is excellent.
Most of the comments are things like "she got the stress wrong on 'the hotel' "
 
And gonna is not pronounced GANA.
More like "gunna" ...
 
4:28 PM
If I'm a Russian security officer raising my baton over my head about to smash things (and I'm not saying I'm not that)...
 
And in sequence, the phrase "I'm going to call" is "umgnacall" ...
 
I think I wouldn't be noticing such minor things. She has only the slightest of Russian accents. I'm looking at you @RegDwigнt
Why can't you be more of a 13 year old girl?
@Robusto Again, as an (imaginary) thug, it's pretty good.
 
I doubt a Russian cop could tell the difference.
 
Put yourself in the place of such a person, it's not hard to do...
No heaven above us only skies of blue...
 
♩ ♪ ♫♪ ♫
 
4:32 PM
somethingety something that truncheon thing
@Gigili Phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust!
The ice age is coming, the sun's zooming in
Meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin
 
@Mitch I read the news.
 
Oh boy
 
You left out "today" ...
 
you can tell someone doesn't know Vietnamese soup when they're eating it out of a bend in their leg.
 
@MattE.Эллен s/Vietnamese//
 
4:35 PM
lol
 
Wait are they slurping?
 
sucking through a straw
 
Did you hear about the Vietnamese soup restaurant? It was named "Pho Q" ... no wonder nobody came.
 
Everyone was certain about the one by the beach
"Pho Shore" must already be the name of a Pho restaurant.
 
See, the weird thing is, it's spelled pho but you're supposed to pronounce it fuh.
Why dey do dat?
 
4:45 PM
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
I'm always wandering into pronunciation traps like that. "I'd like to try the foe, please."
 
in rebellion, I shall pronounce it /pɒhɒ/
I'll just add a vowel for no reason
"Pho Sure" is a restaurant in Shrewsbury, MA
 
@MattE.Эллен When I worked in Marlborough I occasionally had lunch in Shrewsbury. Never saw "Pho Sure," much less heard anyone pronounce it.
 
@Robusto That's a particular annoyance for every language ever.
But then we'd have to learn a new alphabet every time.
so it's a tradeoff
 
Everything is a tradeoff.
 
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