English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

TRiG

00:44

@Robusto Adam Neely is often fun, even though I know nothing about music.

Robusto

00:55

@TRiG I know a lot about music and he's still fun. ^_^

Robusto

02:39

So Kurt Vonnegut was right: there actually is an Ice Nine.

Surprising Discovery That Liquid Water Seems to Have Two States!

►

tchrist

04:04

> When one neologist coined sugarholic on the model of alcoholic in 1965, it suggested that the letter cluster “-aholic” meant “addict (when in fact it’s from “alcohol”, from Arabic “al-kuhul”, “the kohl”, plus the -ic suffix). This allowed the subsequent coinage of workaholic, sexaholic, shopaholic and chocoholic (although curiously, you never hear mention of drugaholics, pornaholics or fagaholics).

^^^^^^ reference

2

> I don’t want an outright ban. All I’m asking for is a little quality control: more buzzwords and fewer bum words.

Poor guy! And he’s got a point: don't we have enough words for bums already? NO HOBOPHOBIA!

user 85795

04:48

Casper Grathwohl, the president of Oxford Dictionaries, said: "I've never witnessed a year in language like the one we've just had. The Oxford team was identifying hundreds of significant new words and usages as the year unfolded, dozens of which would have been a slam dunk for Word of the Year at any other time.

apparently, the English Language & Usage world at Oxford is on tilt

along with the real world

SmokeDetector

05:49

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Post is mostly images (14): Best word for health problems by Julia on english.SE

SmokeDetector

07:40

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in link text in body, potentially bad ns for domain in body, potentially bad keyword in body (71): The weapons moved probably will not be worth much either, or just bound to you on transfer by Dingbest on english.SE

CowperKettle

08:21

People in Yekaterinburg came out in a rally against the murderer Vladimir Putin and his criminal cronies:

The police blocked the streets and shut down the trams and even the subway, so people went on the ice of the river Iset.

CowperKettle

08:43

Scientists have engineered an antibody that effectively disables SARS-CoV-2 and closely related coronaviruses

> The engineered antibody also disabled a variety of related coronaviruses.When given to mice, it stopped SARS-CoV-2 from reproducing in the rodents’ lungs and protected the animals from respiratory disease.

Andrew Leach

@tchrist Yes, it was only one example among many as an example of research which would have been useful had it been done. I wasn't really convinced that they were using it as a true adjective.

CowperKettle

11:29

Grimes Says She Had Part of Her Eyeball Removed in an ‘Experimental Surgery' to ‘Cure Seasonal Depression’

M.A.R.

12:03

@CowperKettle Aha interesting

@FaheemMitha I often say that I don't, but I've mostly read sci-fi or fantasy. I like every genre except probably romance

Faheem Mitha

@M.A.R. I can make a strong pitch for a book that most would probably find boring. I occasionally describe it to people as possibly the most interesting book I've ever read.

M.A.R.

@FaheemMitha I might! I always wanted to pick up where I left off with math, but things got in the way

@FaheemMitha I've read several pretty boring books, not a problem

Faheem Mitha

@M.A.R. It's not boring. People might find it boring, though.

Understanding Power

Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky is a book which came out in 2002. It is a collection of previously unpublished transcripts of seminars, talks, and question-and-answer sessions conducted by Noam Chomsky from 1989 to 1999.The transcripts were compiled and edited by Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel. Mitchell and Schoeffel are public defenders in New York. == Content == The book's ten chapters draw on discussions at various speaking engagements in the United States and Canada. "Weekend Teach-In: Opening Session" (Rowe, Massachusetts, 15–16 April 1989) "Teach-In: Over Coffee" (Rowe...

See also the Goodreads reviews.

M.A.R.

@FaheemMitha Dancing? A skill I might rarely need, but if you mean just for the physical activity side of things, I do exercise some

Faheem Mitha

Can you get hold of books easily where you are?

@M.A.R. Both social and physical.

M.A.R.

12:08

@FaheemMitha Yep

CowperKettle

I tried listening to Chomsky on politics but found it incomprehensible and rambling.

Faheem Mitha

@M.A.R. Probably the best SF thriller I've ever read is "Memoirs of An Invisible Man".

M.A.R.

If not, there's always the great Russia-based sites :p

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle Many people have that reaction.

M.A.R.

@FaheemMitha I have several Chomsky books in the reading list

I'll add this too if it's not already there

Faheem Mitha

12:09

Recent stuff probably isn't that good to listen to. After all, he's over 90 now.

M.A.R.

I love "collection of seminars" books

Faheem Mitha

Earlier video stuff is ok. But you're better off reading his books.

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle I find his older talks, the little that I've heard or read, pretty coherent, are you referring to something recent or specific?

Faheem Mitha

@M.A.R. I can also recommend "A Fire Upon the Deep" and "Marooned In Realtime".

CowperKettle

@M.A.R. I don't remember what exactly I listened to

Faheem Mitha

12:11

The former won at least one major award.

CowperKettle

> In relation to the US invasion of Afghanistan he stated:
"Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism. (9-11, p. 76)"

Faheem Mitha

I wouldn't really call Chomsky "rambling", but I can see how he can give that impression.

CowperKettle

WTF

M.A.R.

@FaheemMitha I'll check this Vernor guy out

@CowperKettle What part is WTF?

CowperKettle

The Taliban is killing civilians left and right. I strongly believe that the Taliban should be constantly harassed, killed, bombed etc., no matter what it takes.

Faheem Mitha

12:12

And most of his books aren't particularly well written. He's got some of the typical academic faults, and then adds some of his own. From a readability perspective, that is.

M.A.R.

I blame the current situation in Afghanistan to be partly US's fault

CowperKettle

If it takes invading Afghanistan, let it be. The Taliban is the Bolshevism of our times, it must be fought with bullets, fire, bombs, anything and everything.

Faheem Mitha

Content-wise it's mostly pretty solid. But he doesn't really package it up well.

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle Even if what it takes is doing something similar to Taliban to the people?

CowperKettle

@M.A.R. No, the people and the democracy should be protected.

Faheem Mitha

12:13

@CowperKettle There's this thing called international law. Perhaps you've heard of it.

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle And they haven't been

For obvious reasons.

"Invasion" you're calling it

CowperKettle

@FaheemMitha I strongly believe that all countries should have invaded Russia in 1918 and stifled the Bolshevism by any means.

Faheem Mitha

@M.A.R. Anyway, I can make lots of other suggestions. But most SF and fantasy isn't really that good, IMO.

@CowperKettle I really have no response to that.

CowperKettle

Same with the Taliban.

By any means whatsoever, and fuck the international law.

M.A.R.

@FaheemMitha I do agree with that, lots of stereotypes. I'm just not at the age where I would have read most of the classics

Faheem Mitha

12:14

@CowperKettle With that attitude, only good things can happen.

M.A.R.

And I started with fantasy and sci-fi classics

So I'm reading the most popular novels and series

Faheem Mitha

@M.A.R. I recommend "Memoirs". It's quite a fun read.

M.A.R.

Whoops, lunch is on fire

BBL

Faheem Mitha

The same does not go for the movie, though.

M.A.R.

@FaheemMitha Do you also have some comedy recommendations? I'll read your response when I come back

Faheem Mitha

12:16

@M.A.R. Comedy books? Hmm. "To Say Nothing of the Dog"?

Quite famous, by one of the most successful SF writers ever. But a bit of a personal taste, I think.

People like Wodehouse, but personally I don't find him that funny.

It's not intended to be pure comedy, anyway. More like farce.

@M.A.R. Actually, that book's ancestor, the novel "Three Men in a Boat", is a reasonably fun read. And of course, very famous. Or it used to be.

There is also a book called "Auntie Mame", which was made into a famous film. As a child, I remember finding it hysterically funny.

A book like "The History of Mr. Polly" isn't really a comedy, but has some comedic elements.

(Just throwing these out at random...)

Hmm, apparently the Goodreads folks consider "Auntie Mame" "hilarious".

Gigili

Does it really make sense to say "Ich kaufe mir eine Pizza für meinen Freund"?

Not easy enough to fathom

I didn't know motel is a roadside hotel for motorists, I thought a motel was a lower-class hotel

Hence the name, motor + hotel

Andrew Leach

12:42

@Gigili Presumably you're asking about mir? It's more euphonious than leaving it out. Is Pizza really feminine?

Gigili

sadly it is feminine!

Yeah, I mean Ich kaufe mir eine Pizza and Ich kaufe eine Pizza für meinen Freund both make perfect sense, but Ich kaufe mir eine Pizza für meinen Freund?

CowperKettle

12:58

@FaheemMitha LOL. I could be wrong. I cannot be 100% right, right? ))

Our galaxy is 300 light-years across. The IC 1101 galaxy is 210 thousand light-years across.

Its central black hole has a mass of 50 billion Suns.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected, potentially bad keyword in answer, toxic answer detected (159): ''Wassup, can a loc come up in your crib''? by Franklin Clinton on english.SE

M.A.R.

13:45

@FaheemMitha Thanks, I will check out all of these (and probably just add them to a list for now like I've done @TCh's recommendations)

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle Yes, it's a big galaxy. But galaxies generally are, I hear.

@M.A.R. Let me know if you want more recommendations. I particularly recommend the Chomsky book.

user 85795

How's the social distancing coming along with half the country rioting? @FaheemMitha

Faheem Mitha

14:05

@user85795 Well, it's not half of the country. And it's not riots, it's protests. Despite what the govt-controlled media may say.

3

And I'm not part of the protests, so I don't know. But it seems cases are falling across India. Not exactly sure why.

user 85795

thanks for the information

\o @Mitch

Mitch

@CowperKettle The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with an estimated visible diameter of 150-200,000 light-years

300 ly is a very small bubble, probably doesn't include even the central ball of the milky way

@user85795 o/

@FaheemMitha of course I approve of that one.

Other Connie willis stories are just as good or better

user 85795

@FaheemMitha but then again, cases reported by govt-controlled agencies doesn't mean much either

CowperKettle

@Mitch Ah

user 85795

\o @Cerberus

Mitch

14:20

@Gigili yes it turns out that most (all?) motels are cheaper/more modest than something labeled 'hotel'.

@CowperKettle probably a matter of a few inadvertently missing 0's.

Robusto

@CowperKettle Good job.

@Gigili Maybe that is a matter of which dialect you're speaking?

Aug 1 '12 at 16:06, by Robusto

> "No language makes perfect sense." — John McWhorter

> There’s little doubt that whomever replaced Trump in the White House would keep their public utterances more in line with historical standards.. There is also little doubt that the writers (or editors) misused the objective case. Would you say "There is little doubt that him would have kept their public utterances ..."? I didn't think so. "Whoever replaced Trump in the White House" is a subject, not an object.

Copy-editing is a dead art, apparently.

tchrist

14:43

@AndrewLeach I’ve gone and added a coda to my answer. I feel like this confusion comes up every single day here.

CowperKettle

List of sexually active popes

This is a list of sexually active popes, Catholic priests who were not celibate before they became pope, and popes who were legally married. Some candidates were sexually active before their election as pope, and others were accused of being sexually active during their papacies. A number of them had offspring. The Second Lateran Council (1139) made the promise to remain celibate a prerequisite to ordination, abolishing the married priesthood. Sexual relationships were generally undertaken therefore outside the bond of matrimony and each sexual act thus committed is considered a mortal sin by the...

tchrist

> dation n. Civil Law. Originally and chiefly in Louisiana: the legal act of giving or conferring something; something legally given or conferred. Frequently in dation in payment: something other than money given in order to discharge a debt; payment in kind. Cf. earlier dation en paiement n.

@Cerberus Look at that peculiar, distant descendent of Latin dono, donare. It’s almost like a donation, but not quite.

> 1839 J. Bouvier Law Dict. U.S.A. I. 281/2 Dation..is the act of giving something. It differs from donation, which is a gift; dation, on the contrary, is giving something without any liberality, as the giving of an office.

> 2001 Insolvency Syst. in Asia (Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development) 345 Dation in payment, whereby property is alienated to the creditor in satisfaction of a debt in money, is recognized as a mode of payment in Philippine law.

There are intervening citations; those are just the first and the last.

Cerberus

15:34

@tchrist Is it no descendant of do?

tchrist

@Cerberus Oh right maybe. I keep mixing up Italian and Latin.

It's just dou in Portuguese and doy in Spanish but dono in Italian.

Cerberus

They're both Latin.

tchrist

The 1st person singular differs.

Cerberus

Datio and donatio are normal words.

tchrist

Oh did Latin have datio as well as donatio?

Cerberus

15:36

It is the same suffix, on a different verb.

Very common.

tchrist

Yes, this is my confusion in this case.

That there are different base verbs involved.

Cerberus

Do, stem da-, supine stem dat-, dat-io.

tchrist

As in a given.

Cerberus

Dono, stem dona-, supine donat-, donat-io.

tchrist

grrr

Cerberus

15:38

Data and donations.

tchrist

I need to read more.

> Origin: A borrowing from Latin. Etymons: Latin datiōn-, datiō.
Etymology: < classical Latin datiōn-, datiō act of giving, donation, gift, (of money, property) handing over, transfer, payment, act of allotting or assigning, in post-classical Latin also (of medicine) dose (1538 or earlier) < dat- , past participial stem of dare to give (see datum n.) + -iō -ion suffix1. With sense 3 compare French dation (1272 in Old French; also in dation en paiement (1709 or earlier))

Ao ywa, qeonf arwm.

So yes, wrong stem.

Cerberus

There is little difference in meaning.

tchrist

Clearly, I look neither at the screen nor the keyboard while typing.

Cerberus

The suffix blinded you from seeing the tiny stem.

tchrist

Yes.

dados are givens in Spanish, as in cosas dadas.

"things given"

But dice are dedos, not from the given words but the digital ones.

> From Old Spanish dedo, from Latin digitus (compare Catalan dit, French doigt, Italian dito, Portuguese dedo, Romanian deget), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *deyǵ- (“to show, point out, pronounce solemnly”). Doublet of dígito, which was borrowed rather than inherited.

I love doublets. They sound like something you'd wear to a fancy dress party.

And there are dodos. :)

The extinguished pigeons of little wing.

Don't slip on the dodo's doodoos.

Faheem Mitha

15:48

@user85795 If you mean Indian govt reporting is not trustworthy (in general), then I agree.

Cerberus

16:06

My ancestors exterminated the dodos, I think. Or at least their fellow countrymen did.

> The human population on Mauritius (an area of 1,860 km2 or 720 sq mi) never exceeded 50 people in the 17th century, but they introduced other animals, including dogs, pigs, cats, rats, and crab-eating macaques, which plundered dodo nests and competed for the limited food resources.[43]
At the same time, humans destroyed the forest habitat of the dodos. The impact of the introduced animals on the dodo population, especially the pigs and macaques, is today considered more severe than that of hunting.[93] Rats were perhaps not much of a threat to the nests, since dodos would have been used t…

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive title detected, potentially bad keyword in title (54): (potentially offensive title -- see MS for details) by Capricorn_noir on english.SE

tchrist

16:46

If you want to fund a sociolinguistic study, you could actually find out definitively. Failing that, make up your own story and claim it's true. That's what everybody else does. — John Lawler 3 mins ago

2

heh

tchrist

17:28

What rhymes with H?

CowperKettle

The mountain on top of which Shiva lives

Faheem Mitha

18:05

@Mitch I'm happy you approve, but why "of course"?

@Mitch He wanted comedies.

tchrist

@EdwinAshworth And here I’d always thought that gymtimidation meaning “the gift of naked fear” was a genetically engineered frankenword created via the radical recombination of three distinct radices (ἔτῠμᾰ, etymons): ① Greek gymnos (γυμνός) meaning naked as in gymnosperm (γυμνόσπερμος) for “naked seed”; ② Latin timidus meaning fearful from timēre as in Virgil’s timeless “timeō Danaōs et dōna ferentīs” mouthed by Laocoön not Cassandra; and ③ Cajun dation from Latin datiō meaning gift as a term of art in Louisiana Civil Law via Law French “dation en paiement”. :) — tchrist ♦ 7 mins ago

Clearly today is Sunday. :)

CowperKettle

> Sranan Tongo's lexicon is a fusion of mostly English grammar and Dutch vocabulary (~85%).

SmokeDetector

18:38

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected, potentially bad keyword in answer, toxic answer detected (159): What is the origin and history of the word "motherf---er"? by Capricorn_noir on english.SE

Gigili

Yeah, today was Sunday.

The whole weekend is already gone!

@Mitch Motels were originally designed for motorists, that was the interesting part not the rates.

@Robusto May be but very weird sounding

@Robusto That, or "people are stupid".

CowperKettle

19:29

> MIT researchers have developed a type of neural network that learns on the job, not just during its training phase. These flexible algorithms, dubbed “liquid” networks, change their underlying equations to continuously adapt to new data inputs. news.mit.edu/2021/machine-learning-adapts-0128

Run for the hills.

Mitch

19:46

@FaheemMitha Because it would be reasonable to think that I think that of Willis, given our previous discussions mentioning Wodehouse in a not unfavorable light.

I am similarly not totally unenthralled by Wodehouse (I don't think if I had read him without commentary by others if I would have bothered continuing to read.)

But Willis is a good mix of light hearted and serious (not all in the same book - one book light, another a bit darker) in case @M.A.R. is still interested.
Bellwether
Passages
Crosstalk
are all 'light'. Good sci-fi but nobody dying or fear of dying.

@Gigili I was just addressing the common feeling of the word (cheap) vs the etymology (motor+hotel) and that they are pretty much the same thing in the US. Which might help explain things.

cheap as in inexpensive -and- cheap as in poor quality.

tchrist

20:05

@Mitch NOT TRUE! Passages fucked me up.

Mitch

20:16

@tchrist I personally only remember Bellwether in any form, so I was taking it on faith from .... sources:

Willis includes elements of madcap comedy in the style and form of Passage, and links different events thematically in order to foreshadow later events.

So as much as one can have a madcap adventure about near death experiences, I would expect Willis to be able to pull it off.

Gigili

@Mitch Oh I see.

You're right.

Robusto

22:27

Death by puppies. Apparently that's a thing ...

@Mitch Interestingly, cheap comes from OE ceap referring merely to a commercial transaction. Later adulterations brought the pejorative contexts into view.

tchrist

CRAYYYYYYYYZEEED

The effort they've gone to in order to simulate Victorian-era randomized handset type is amazing.

Xanne

@CowperKettle I have always assumed that AI algorithms were, in the terminology of the quote, “liquid”—in fact, that that was the whole point.

tchrist

Look at the letterfit in the header.

Xanne

After all, if you can’t learn from experience, you’re left with . . .

Robusto

@tchrist That is below and beyond the call of duty, IMO. The day I have to hand-transform each letter is the day I quit my job. Oh wait, I'm retired. I don't have to quit.

tchrist

22:34

@Robusto That HAS to be the result of a running it through some algorithmic transformation; a program not a person.

Or else, yeah.

Robusto

And btw, you could simply create CSS classes and handle the transforms like that, for each letter, since obviously letters in a font would have their own peculiarities consistently, more or less.

tchrist

Well, with hand-cut type you might have like a few dozen possible e’s all recurring but each different because you don't have one master for all of them. Couldn't you?

Robusto

Adding CSS to the element "style" attribute is wasteful. It goes back to the days of tag-soup HTML and FONT tags.

tchrist

This is like in some ransom-note version of Time Roman.

Robusto

@tchrist You could create classnames like e1, e2, e3 ... for the character e with slight variations, and then randomly salt those in.

Do the same for all the other letters. Common ones like e could have the most variants, others like q and z perhaps not so much.

But really, is the game worth the candle?

tchrist

22:38

Write the program once, then forget. Stand upon the shoulders of giants and kick.

Robusto

@tchrist That is what programming is all about.

tchrist

Robusto

Although I really do like the process of figuring out how to do something. And only then write the program once and then forget.

tchrist

The probably have a want-ad for programmers hidden in here somewhere. They've done that before.

Robusto

@tchrist Someone's slip is showing. But no fear, I would never wish to start tinkering with that rat's nest.

tchrist

22:43

I'm easily impressed: the article looks good.

"Is it real or is it Memorex?"

> In 1868, with his penchant for numerical precision, Mr. Lain informed readers of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper that there were “forty-four instances where the streets have duplicate names; five cases where the street name occurs three times; and three instances where the same name for a street occurs four times.”

Robusto

@tchrist An easier way to do that would be to randomize a CSS template that is created new for each viewing. It would be easy enough to do. That would give even more reason for ditching the style attributes in favor of CSS classnames.

tchrist

@Robusto Haha! Per-view randomization would be irreproducibly awesome!

Robusto

Write once, then forget. All is in order.

tchrist

element.style {
    letter-spacing: 0.039585761955739374px;
}

That's 17-digits of precious. That means they're using "extended double precision".

Not regular doubles.

It's a trivial compilation change, at least if you have processor instructions that support them.

Robusto

And I doubt there's a single person who could tell the difference between 0.039585761955739374px and 0.04px letter-spacing.

tchrist

22:52

In layman's terms: they're using 80-bit floats, not 64-bit floats.

Extended precision

Extended precision refers to floating-point number formats that provide greater precision than the basic floating-point formats. Extended precision formats support a basic format by minimizing roundoff and overflow errors in intermediate values of expressions on the base format. In contrast to extended precision, arbitrary-precision arithmetic refers to implementations of much larger numeric types (with a storage count that usually is not a power of two) using special software (or, rarely, hardware). == Extended precision implementations == There is a long history of extended floating-po...

Robusto

Extra digits to the right of the decimal represent the very meaning of "diminishing returns."

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in body, no whitespace in body, no whitespace in title (261): TestTestTestTestTest ✏️ by user2458076 on english.SE

Robusto

Hmm, I just tried to flag Smokey's referenced post, but the system won't let me flag as "very poor quality." Why do you suppose that would be?

tchrist

Because I rollbacked and hard-locked it while you weren't looking.

Robusto

Ah.

tchrist

22:56

Race condition.

Robusto

I remember those well. My worst nightmares were race conditions.

tchrist

So your display didn't represent the actual state by the time it got there.

Every day of my life, or at least every week, I am plagued by race condition problems.

Robusto

Yeah, you wind up putting in clunky "for now" fixes to solve race conditions, promising to go back and figure out the problem when you have more time. Like when do you ever have more time?

tchrist

Need more atomics.

if (it looks good) do something(that only works when good); is inherently busted.

Because the world may have changed between the good and the something.

Robusto

I'm just happy I never had to do GPS programming. I think the race conditions there would be breathtakingly awful.

tchrist

23:02

What, you don't like having to take Einsteinian relativistic effects into account when programming? Wimp!

Robusto

Guilty as charged, your honor.

tchrist

> But at 38 microseconds per day, the relativistic offset in the rates of the satellite clocks is so large that, if left uncompensated, it would cause navigational errors that accumulate faster than 10 km per day! GPS accounts for relativity by electronically adjusting the rates of the satellite clocks, and by building mathematical corrections into the computer chips which solve for the user's location.

Without the proper application of relativity, GPS would fail in its navigational functions within about 2 minutes.

Robusto

That's what I'm talking about.

tchrist

Algorithms I can always do.

Formal protocols are doable though harder.

But solving the 𝒩-body problem of 𝒩 different non-intersecting
rotating reference-frames moving at different relative velocities
(read: microservices) and then integrating that with quantum
teleportation in products X and Y leaves me no better off than a
kitten entangled by a giant ball of yarn that's actually made
of unbreakable flypaper.

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…