English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Robusto

01:01

@Mitch: Sorry, you left that one hanging and I plucked it. All in the spirit of fun, of course. Hope that did not touch you on the raw.

@tchrist We broke freezing for a few minutes. Tomorrow should be better.

CowperKettle

Our Narrow Slice

►

He says that the Nazis sent a mission trying to spy on British ships from the Rugen island believing that the Earth was hollow and we lived on the inside. Sounds like complete bullshit.

Robusto

@CowperKettle Edgar Rice Burroughs (the creator of Tarzan) had a whole series of SF novels based on the premise that the earth was hollow. The interior of the earth was a prehistoric (what else?) land called Pellucidar.

Pellucidar

Pellucidar is a fictional Hollow Earth invented by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs for a series of action adventure stories. In a crossover event between Burroughs's series, there is a Tarzan story in which he travels into Pellucidar. The stories initially involve the adventures of mining heir David Innes and his inventor friend Abner Perry after they use an "iron mole" to burrow 500 miles into the Earth's crust. Later protagonists include indigenous caveman Tanar and additional visitors from the surface world, notably Tarzan, Jason Gridley, and Frederich Wilhelm Eric von Mendeldorf und von...

CowperKettle

I'll never believe that in the 1940s some people could have believed that

Robusto

Some people to this day believe the Earth is flat.

Also, Jules Verne did something on the "hollow" earth with a subterranean sea, etc.:

Journey to the Center of the Earth

Journey to the Center of the Earth (French: Voyage au centre de la Terre), also translated with the variant titles A Journey to the Centre of the Earth and A Journey into the Interior of the Earth), is a classic science fiction novel by Jules Verne. It was first published in French in 1864, then reissued in 1867 in a revised and expanded edition. Professor Otto Lidenbrock is the tale's central figure, an eccentric German scientist who believes there are volcanic tubes that reach to the very center of the earth. He, his nephew Axel, and their Icelandic guide Hans rappel into Iceland's celebrated...

CowperKettle

Did the Nazis actually set up an observatory on the Island of Rugen to spy on the British, believing the curvature of the Earth was negative?

Robusto

01:11

Umberto Eco!

> Umberto Eco covers the topic thoroughly in The Book of Legendary Lands, 2013 (the English title sounds somewhat frivolous, but it is actually a work of history, as indicated by its Italian title, Storia delle terre e dei luoghi leggendari).

CowperKettle

> While Bender and Neupert (rather than "Neuperl") were actual people who promoted the hollow earth theory in Nazi Germany, this episode is only referenced in conspiracy or "weird Nazi" kind of literature and I have been unable to verify any of it independently with actual footnotes to actual documents.

Umberto Eco, the writer of drivel.

Robusto

Heh, I think he's enjoyable for his glimpses into historical periods.

Why do you dislike him?

CowperKettle

I tried reading him, and it was very rambling.

But not as horrible as Salman Rushdie. He is the most horrible.

But it was so long ago that I read Eco.

> A boat full of clowns was captured by cannibals. Soon, they were a laughing stock.

Robusto

Har-har.

@tchrist: I need a noun for "mastery of esoteric subject matter" as in "Prof. Langlois's ___________ in the field of medieval helmetry was in full display at the conference."

There is a word for that that I just can't cudgel into my brain at the moment.

Probably I ate too much dinner and the blood has gone to my gut. Good thing I didn't have wine with it.

I'm thinking it ends in -ery, but I could be wrong. It might be that I'm blinded by mastery, which is not the word.

In other cases the word can be used almost insultingly, I believe.

tchrist

01:32

For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky

"For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" is the eighth episode of the third season of the American science fiction television series Star Trek. Written by Rik Vollaerts and directed by Tony Leader, it was first broadcast on November 8, 1968. In the episode, the crew of the Enterprise rush to stop an asteroid from colliding with a Federation world, but discover the asteroid is actually an inhabited ship. == Plot == The Federation starship Enterprise encounters a ship disguised as a large asteroid, which is on a collision course with planet Daran V. Captain Kirk and First Officer Spock...

@Robusto I'm offnet right now. Power has returned but not internet.

Robusto

@tchrist OK. Good luck getting the power back.

Hmm, I think the word might be erudition.

That just popped into my head just now, and I think it fits. Why I couldn't think of it before I'm not sure.

Mitch

02:02

@Robusto I was the first starrer

Robusto

@Mitch ^_^

Mitch

OK what's the deal with 'que' vs 'como'?

Some body says something. I couldn't quite hear it. What do you say? 'Que?' or 'Como'?

Some body says something. I can't make sense of it or it is crazy or unbelievable. What do you say? 'Que?' or 'Como'?

Robusto

In most cases, como is the word.

Mitch

I'm pretty sure the cutoff, if one could describe a meaningful coordinate axis for it, is the same as for French

but it always sounds really unnatural to say 'Como?'

Robusto

Comment?

Mitch

02:05

Genau

Robusto

@Mitch Well, it's unnatural to speak a foreign language anyway, so in for a penny, in for a pound.

Mitch

@Robusto It's unnatural for dogs to walk on their hind legs, but it is fun to watch.

Robusto

@Mitch Samuel Johnson on that subject: "It's not done well, but you're surprised it can be done at all."

Mitch

So do you ever say 'Que?' in Spanish for 'I didn't quite catch what you said' or 'Hunh?'

Robusto

Sure, before I catch myself and say "¿Como?"

Mitch

02:09

@Robusto Samuel Johnson never said anything that is ascribed to him. Boswell mad it all up himself.

Same for Plato and Socrates.

Robusto

We'll never know for sure.

Mitch

Also Machiavelli was a satirist.

Say what you will about Hitler but...

Robusto

Boswell was rather a petty-proud man. In his London Journal he lusts after, and rationalizes that he absolutely needs, a silver-headed cane (or sword, I disremember which right now).

Mitch

@Robusto One, weren't they all back then. And two searches on amazon

now searching for a sword hidden inside a cane

now searching for a car that drives into the ocean and converts into a submarine

Robusto

I'd buy that for a dollar.

Mitch

02:13

now searching for a 'wrist telephone' a la Dick Tracy

Holy shit that's expensive.

And you need to buy an iPhone to go along with it.

Robusto

@Mitch samsung.com/us/watches/galaxy-watch3

Mitch

I'm not crazy man. I will not click your 'link'

goddamit I clicked you link

Robusto

Knew you couldn't resist.

Mitch

now I have five windows opening up asking me to chat about their monthly plan

huh

not so expensive

$3.55 a month

for as many months as it takes to colonize Ganymede

starting today!

Robusto

You can afford it.

If you live in Massachusetts you can afford a Galaxy watch 3

Mitch

02:17

considering inflation, and the exchange rate for Imperial Talents, it's not a bad deal

Robusto

That's the watch I use. I like it a lot.

Mitch

@Robusto the second mortgage I have to allow me to pay for a iPod Nano fifteen years ago is still being paid off.

Robusto

Best thing about it is actually two things. One, you can see who's texting you so you don't have to pull out your phone (and can even send non-committal one-word answers from the watch) and two, you can use it to go back and forth in music or podcast or audio book whatever increment the app allows.

Mitch

@Robusto In my watch story that I was telling Copperpenny I mentioned that I believe in watches like I believe in leprechauns and fairies.

as in 1) I don't. and 2) They're fun to eat in your breakfast cereal.

Robusto

So I didn't catch a name in The Great Courses, say, I can rotate the bezel counter-clockwise one detent and it goes back 30 seconds.

@Mitch That would bear watching.

Mitch

02:23

@Robusto Oh. That is awfully annoying. Especially in 1) meetings (in person. shit you can do -anything now when everybody is virtual) or 2) when speeding down the highway with a Humvee on both sides of you shooting a Browning oil cooled 30 cal with hollow tipped copper rounds and a Peterbuilt with high octane intercoolers and high speed taper shank spiral flute reamers an inch from your ass

and you're taking a sip of YOur Starbuck's, your phone rings ...

and it's in your pocket

underneath

the seat belt

and a winter coat

and two spare surgical masks

and a used tissue

oh another used tissue

wait there are three?

Robusto

See? You can't really afford not to have a Galaxy Watch 3, now can you?

Mitch

OMG I hear howling outside

@Robusto I think the lesson there was...

steel plating

wait.

yes definitely steel plating, but also don't answer you phone in the care whether it is available or not.

Ooh... engineering idea...

Robusto

Steel plating costs more than the watch.

Mitch

have the batteries...

which all our cars will have in 5 years...

have the batteries be the cladding that protects you from Skynet's Marauder drones.

that is...

the. car. body. is. the. battery.

Robusto

Hey, speaking of cool little theaters like Biograph and Music Box, did the Coolidge Corner theater go under with all this Covid stuff going on?

Mitch

02:28

huh

THere are so many things I haven't thought of.

Robusto

Wait, that's in Brookline. You probably never get all the way over there from Newton, huh?

Mitch

I think the last time I went there was for the premiere of The Hateful 8

Robusto

Myth busted.

Mitch

Did you ever go to the West Newton Cinema?

Robusto

Yes, but I can't remember what I saw there.

Mitch

02:30

That's still alive but I think not as a thriving business

like they rent it out for a party with some limit on the number of people.

Robusto

I went to that cinema about as often as I went to Fenway Park. Every two or three years, in other words.

Mitch

West Newton is very dingy. Coolidge Corner is a little sparklier and maybe slightly more commercial?

@Robusto The food is really good at Fenway now.

Or rather, the food is getting a lot better.

Robusto

@Mitch It better be for the prices they charge.

Mitch

OK. I always liked the food there. I can't hide that anymore.

Robusto

Last time I was at Fenway (12 years ago?) a Sam was $9 a plastic cup.

I can't imagine what it must be now.

Mitch

02:35

@Robusto I think I've only been to Fenway when someone had tickets but they couldn't make it, or some institution was giving away cheap tickets.

@Robusto Have you been to the brewery? That's a good tour.

I believe in beer like I believe in wrist watches though.

Robusto

The last time I took the family there it was around $500 for seats and refreshments.

I believe in beer. Absolutely I do.

Mitch

I enjoy the Ben and Jerry's factory tour a lot more because I am not a monster and I like ice cream

@Robusto The family better goddam well enjoy themselves for that!

Robusto

Yeah. You would think so. And that got us seats on left field just a little past third base, maybe 30 rows up.

Mitch

@Robusto It's an acquired taste I believe not dissimilar to motor oil?

Robusto

When I had the agency in Boston I would get suppliers to get me good seats. Like six rows back off the Sox dugout.

@Mitch Well, except you don't want to put it in your crankcase.

Mitch

02:39

@Robusto hm... better than right field where you see an infinite field of the backs of peoples heads.

Robusto

You should be taking notes on this stuff.

@Mitch The right field seats are the worst in all of baseball.

Mitch

@Robusto I don't think I'd have that problem. I would never drink out of a crankcase.

Robusto

A wise policy.

Mitch

@Robusto At least baseball is more interesting than say golf

or fishing

Did I mention that I don't believe in sports either?

Robusto

@Mitch Hey, don't knock golf. It's how I get my best naps in the summer.

If you're not getting a nap with golf you're just doing it wrong.

Mitch

02:42

I mean when the revolution comes and I am Lord Emperor and I make the rules about the kind of shit I let people do on their breaks from the coal mines, I'm not going to outright -ban- sports.

Robusto

The Simulation Hypothesis is Pseudoscience

►

Mitch

@Robusto I have that saved in my watch later list

Whenever that topic comes up in conversation I have to stifle my constant 'what horseshit'

Robusto

Yeah. It's the highbrow version of "Ancient Aliens."

Mitch

@Robusto nice

Robusto

My brother believes in the ancient aliens thing. "How did different ancient civilizations come up with pyramids at the same time?" Well, 1) they didn't, 2) the "pyramids" were different, and 3) the pyramid is the simplest form of engineering there is: basically, you just pile stones one on the other. No arches, no vaults, no trusses. In fact, if you dump stones on the ground in one place they'll form a similar structure.

Mitch

02:47

My MIL is in a book club that reads top books on some non-fiction sciency list and it's very commendable since she's not a science person...but every time I hear it's some Max Tegmark or who's that bald French guy... the capital of Zimbabwe? Harare?

Harari.

anyway anytime I see those authors I have to stifle...oh I said that already.

@Robusto What?

Robusto

What what?

Mitch

Or as the Spanish might say...

Huhn?

haven't you seen the xrays of what is inside the pyramids?

yes more pyramid

but what's inside -that-?

Robusto

Ben Carson says they were built to store grain. A top Trump appointee.

Mitch

I mean you could store a -little- grain in them.

you could probably build what one might call a 'grain storage' for it that might be a more efficient use of building material

Robusto

Well, if that's what they were used for, why did they only build a few of them? Did they not find out that they sucked for grain storage well before actually building one? How dumb were they?

Mitch

02:52

'Como?' just sounds weird. I think the Spanish are doing it wrong.

I'm probably going to have to fix that for them.

@Robusto That's where the aliens come in.

They designed it.

They get the blame.

You come here from light years away and what do you do?

Robusto

And then the people said, "Those stupid aliens, making us do all that work for very little grain storage..."

Mitch

exactly

and that's why there are no more aliens

we ate them

Robusto

Stupid aliens.

Mitch

no grain...OK what else is there to eat?

Robusto

Aliens.

Mitch

02:55

All this talk of eating aliens is making me hungry.

Robusto

Country-fried alien steaks. Mmmm-boy.

Mitch

Light years of travel and what do they do? Mostly hide.

OK I'll give them that...they're really good at hiding.

probably need the same tech as FTL travel

they're -really- good at hiding

Robusto

Journey - Don't Stop Believin' (Audio)

►

The Alien Theme Song.

Mitch

Some music that came out of the 70's isn't the best

But...

there was this one album from this one band.

that I played over and over

Robusto

Escape?

Mitch

02:59

ingrained in my mind

didn't hear -any- of their other albums for decades

then got nostalgic

looked for that old album

and then all the others

and they all sounded mostly the same

but

I -love- the album that I listened to as a kid

and the other albums before and after that sound mostly same?

meh

You'd think it'd be 'Oh and here's -more- of the stuff you love!'

Nope.

It's not -bad- exactly.

Just...

not...

just not as good as you'd expect.

Or I'd expect.

You might have different experience

Robusto

Funny, but old songs will pop into my head when I'm out riding, things I haven't listened to in 40 or 50 years. And there will be a lick or a verse and I can't place it. And then it will annoy me and I'll try to figure it out, going on YouTube and searching.

Mitch

@Robusto What? haha no is that some Christopher Cross shit?

@Robusto Youtube is great.

Robusto

@Mitch That's the Journey album from which the song above is on.

Mitch

most anything you like is there

Robusto

@Mitch Also true of Spotify. But the difference is, on YouTube you can search for a song by a fragment of the lyrics, which can be invaluable.

Mitch

03:04

@Robusto oh.

@Robusto on spotify?

Robusto

Pretty much. They haven't stumped me yet, as long as I know the group and/or the song.

Mitch

I think Copperscooper scared away Reg

Wait.. how do you search for a song fragment on youtube?

Is it like image search but instead you upload an mp3?

Robusto

@Mitch Well, that sucks. I don't know why those two can't get along. Surely we have room enough for more than one Russian at a time.

CowperKettle

Acetaminophen worked. 36.8°C

Robusto

@Mitch For example, if you go and search for "journey just a small town girl" see what they give you.

Mitch

03:09

@CowperKettle dude are you still up or di you just get up early?

Robusto

It's a lyric search.

@CowperKettle Good job.

Mitch

@CowperKettle miracle drugs

CowperKettle

@Mitch I fell asleep and just woke up

It's 8 am.

Mitch

@Robusto oh yeah I totally do that. that works well

Robusto

See, how it works for me is I don't fall asleep and suddenly just wake up.

Mitch

03:10

@CowperKettle Any good radio stations there?

I just found...

CowperKettle

@Mitch In Russia? Yes, a lot of them

Mitch

or really someone found and told me

@CowperKettle in your town

they told me about Radio Garden

CowperKettle

@Mitch There must be some great stations in my town too

Mitch

you can play any radio station in the effing world

that has an internet stream

CowperKettle

Yes, I used this website, it's cool

Mitch

03:11

so Iran is out

most of China is out

North Korea? Can't tell if it is out because I don't think they have this thing called 'radio'

CowperKettle

I liked to listen to small British stations. They all of a sudden start "shipping forecasts" with some odd wording. That is charming. I mean weather forecasts.

Mitch

@CowperKettle I was disappointed that they didn't have any radio stations from Antarctica

I would listen the crap out of that

CowperKettle

radio stations of Yekaterinburg

Mitch

@CowperKettle Oh yeah that's fun 'Finistere 30 knots S, Trafalgar 5 knots ENE, Rockome 5 knots and bleeding'

@CowperKettle ah but the question is...which one do -you- like there?

CowperKettle

@Mitch I haven't listened to any for maybe 22 years.

When we first moved to Yekaterinburg, I discovered there was BBC World Radio in English, and I turned it on and it was constantly turned on.

This way, I learned to recognize English speech well.

M.A.R.

03:19

Too Much -- toomuchonline.org

Mitch

I will not click on th

goddammit

CowperKettle

I turned on the last radio on the list (my city's) and it's nice.

Radio Gorod FM radiomap.eu/ru/play/gorod-fm.htm

Gorod means "city" in Russian.

Cognate with "guard", I believe.

Mitch

I just saw a little 8 minute vlog by some woman who used to live in ... Spassk?

CowperKettle

Ah, no. With "garden"

@Mitch Yes, there must be a city named Spassk

Spassk, Penza Oblast

Spassk (Russian: Спасск) is a town and the administrative center of Spassky District in Penza Oblast, Russia. Population: 7,442 (2010 Census); 7,628 (2002 Census); 8,299 (1989 Census). == History == In 1648, an uncultivated field was discovered in Shatsky Uyezd and was given to a nearby monastery. In 1663, a village was established there, called Bogdanovo (Богданово). In 1779, it was renamed Spassk and made the seat of an uyezd by a decree of Catherine the Great. However, soon it became apparent that confusion would result since several other towns in Russia shared the name (notably Spass...

From the root "spas" - "to save"

Mitch

Life in a small town in the far east of Russia / Spassk-Dalny VLOG

►

CowperKettle

03:22

Ah. Spassk-dalny means "far-away Spassk"

Dalny is "far-away" [adjective]

Mitch

It was like such a small town but she was so proud of it.

It's no Vladivostok if you know what I'm sayin

CowperKettle

My close friend comes from the town of Lobva. It was not even in Wikipedia. I started the article there.

It's ultra-tiny and lies about 400 km north of here

tchrist

I have a terribly idiotic question. Why are there blackouts caused by grids being overdrawn? Are people really trying to heat their homes with ELECTRICITY? Who does that, anywhere? If they are, it's insane. They might as well open their fridges and freezers wide open, since doing so will cause a net gain in energy consumed and heat you up, at least in a closed system.

CowperKettle

@Mitch Her language is so good

@tchrist Because people have no other recourse but use electricity?

tchrist

@CowperKettle Electricity makes for poor furnaces.

CowperKettle

03:26

@tchrist I have an electric heater, an oil-filled one.

Works nice.

tchrist

Oh, My. God.

I had no idea anybody tried to do that.

CowperKettle

I don't have natural gas in my flat..

Mitch

@CowperKettle her accent is very good and there were only like one or two places where she used words that, while they made sense, weren't the usual ones and stood out. I don't get how people can learn languages so well.

tchrist

@CowperKettle Is there a multiflat heating system that all share?

Mitch

@tchrist I think in the South they have a lot of fuel pumps which run on electricity (they work for both AC and heat?)

CowperKettle

03:28

@tchrist Yes, a water-based one. Water-filled radiators in every room, and the whole building is fed from some huge pipe with hot water that arrives from the central heating station.

It's just that sometimes it gets cold in my room.

tchrist

@Mitch Fuel pumps take very little electricity compared with using that electricity to generate heat through resistance.

CowperKettle

And sometimes the whole system starts operating too late, and you have to use electric heaters for several days before the general system turns on. It is turned off for the summer period.

tchrist

@CowperKettle That sounds pretty familiar. I'm glad I live in a place with gas now, but I've lived in your kind, too.

I know I've never lived anywhere that relies on directly converting electricity to heat rather than using something more efficient.

That's like running electricity through a resistor. Wow.

I do have a little electric space-heater in my garage. I nearly never, ever, ever run it because it's so terribly expensive. Just to save potted plants from unnaturally early deep freezes at times, like when we had that bad summer snow last year.

Mitch

5 hours ago, by Mitch

I'm saying all this third hand... I don't actually know anything and haven't experienced anything.

tchrist

So this is all because the South has made the shortsighted choices of the grasshopper ignoring winter's approach, and now are paying the price. So be it. Nature will teach them not to be so stupid and wasteful.

It's a shame how much misery and even death these lessons cost. But maybe it is the only way.

Feb 7 at 22:42, by tchrist

Nov 20 '20 at 0:39, by tchrist

> Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime: the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.

user 85795

03:38

::savage::

tchrist

Reality is red in tooth and claw: be not deceived.

I've even lived in places with wood-burning stoves (furnaces, really), both fancy ones and primitive ones.

But electricity like that little electric space-heater in my garage? Unthinkable. It would bankrupt me, and the planet.

CowperKettle

SpaceX plans to put 40 thousand satellites into orbit. That sounds spooky. What if they all start collding.

tchrist

They're like the size of penny right? :)

I wish.

user 85795

Etymology of the day: naive In philosophy, "unreflecting, uncritical" (1895), used of non-philosophers.

tchrist

04:07

> Uzbekistan plans to fully transition the Uzbek language from the Cyrillic script to a Latin-based alphabet by January 1, 2023.

How can that be legal? Surely Putin will just veto it. :) @CowperKettle

No joke dissection. It's like with frogs: messy and unpleasant, and by the time you're done, you've killed it.

tchrist

04:34

You know how they've been trying to (correctly) teach kids that birds are really dinosaurs? There's of course some resistance and confusion that goes along with that, no doubt owing to the fanciness of the classically coined word dinosaur. So I know to make this easier, lots easier. Let's just rename dinosaurs so they have an easier name. Let's just call them all birds! Mission accomplished. Easy peasy.

user 85795

Dinobirds?

tchrist

Well, it isn't just the terror birds, awesome though those are.

Interesting. Didn't know they'd think of that one.

Dinosaurs are just weird. They really are not like mammals at all. In many bizarre ways.

Just bugs me calling birds lizards is all.

user 85795

the "wavicle" went through the same sort of confusion

tchrist

Because pteranodon was neither bird, dinosaur, nor lizard, but is stuck being a pterosaur nonetheless. No wingèd lizards were they!

@user85795 Ew!

user 85795

:-)

Færd

05:27

THE “FOR THE PEOPLE ACT” WOULD MAKE THE U.S. A DEMOCRACY

Is this really happening? Sounds too good to be true?

This is the kind of ambition the Democrats should've shown last time they had the presidency and both chambers in their hands. Imagine if that had happened!

> This is appropriate, because the For the People Act is plausibly the most important legislation considered by Congress in decades. It would change the basic structure of U.S. politics, making it far more small-d democratic. The bill makes illegal essentially all of the anti-enfranchisement tactics perfected by the right over the past decades. It then creates a new infrastructure to permanently bolster the influence of regular people.

> The bill’s provisions largely fall into three categories: First, it makes it far easier to vote, both by eliminating barriers and enhancing basic outreach to citizens. Second, it makes everyone’s vote count more equally, especially by reducing gerrymandering. Third, it hugely amplifies the power of small political donors, allowing them to match and possibly swamp the power of big money.

> It’s difficult to believe, based on its lamentable history of squabbling and in-fighting, that the Democratic Party will manage to hang together and pass a significant bill that’s both in their own obvious self-interest and in that of the country. But stranger things have happened, such as the fact that the For the People Act has gotten this far in the first place.

Færd

05:44

Could the For The People Act Save American Democracy?

> If Republicans take the House in 2022, Biden’s legislative agenda is done. That likely means a stalled economy and more dysfunction in Washington, which then puts Republicans in a strong position to take the White House in 2024, at which point Democrats could be relegated to near-permanent minority status despite a national numerical advantage. It’s hard to see how functioning Democratic institutions survive such a structural imbalance.
That means H.R.1 and S.1 one are effectively the party’s last stand before a new era of minority-rule politics sets in.

Faheem Mitha

07:07

I don't post petition links here, but this is an amazing piece of insanity. Please sign. change.org/p/…

2

CowperKettle

08:19

Local businessman plans to renovate his native school thus.

He studies in this school as a kid.

He has already turned the innards into a Versailles.

Xanne

Where is RegDwight

@RegDwigнt

Anyway I need to sleep now so I can watch Zverev and Djokivitch later,j

Matt E. Эллен

09:55

@user85795 sure, it looks like it has two wheels, and seems to move in a repetitive undulating motion, but it's neither a wave nor a bicycle

user 85795

:D

aka a bicycle wave

Matt E. Эллен

wave bicycle duality can be seen in the tour de France

2

just put a thoughtless spectator in the path of the oncoming pack, and you'll see the individual bicycles within the wave

it all depends on how you decide to measure

user 85795

Indeed; but, if one of the cyclists waves at the crowd, what do we call that, my good sir?

Note: this is independent of the observer.

A wave of bicycles each of which is waving in and of itself.

CowperKettle

10:31

A little lifehack: never drink coffee at your work in the morning, because that won't let you fall asleep until noon.

@Xanne You love to watch tennis! My dad used to have a whole mountain of videocassettes with tennis matches.

> My friend Misha recorded his twin brother in his smartphone's phonebook as "Kolya Spare Parts"

Conrado

11:48

@CowperKettle Yes, and what happens when the other thirty nine thousand of them become obsolete because they stop working or higher bandwidth is needed?

"Hello, my name is John Dimter, I work in LEO debris recovery."

Or are these things going fast enough to burn up on "re-entry"?

Just a quarter of a kilogram surviving would be enough to do you in.

CowperKettle

12:44

On two trams in Yekaterinburg, special air recirculators have been installed for testing. They allegedly destroy viruses in the air.

I wonder if that's true or not.

I wonder if they use UV light, that would be cool

Gigili

@Robusto Is it? I always struggle how to pronounce even the simplest word to sound native and I must listen to those dumb audio recordings in online dictionaries which are mostly robots to find it out.

I once wondered if flour and flower are pronounced the same, easily got my answer by looking at their IPA.

In other news, it just dawned on me that either Russia or China has produced the virus to outdistance other countries economically.

For more information on that, visit my website.

double-u double-u double-u Gigili dot com

or rather, dot news... just because I feel like it.

CowperKettle

13:03

It's empty.

Gigili

Haha, that domain address is not taken! I should consider buying it.

nytimes.com/2021/02/15/opinion/…?

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