English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Robusto

4:21 PM

@Cerberus Yup.

CowperKettle

Cerberus

Besides, I wouldn't want essential services in my country to be dependent on a foreign company.

This includes food, power, communications, medicines.

Unfortunately, we are already partly dependent on Chinese and Indian companies for medicines.

And partly on American companies for communications (but those can still be worked around at this stage).

Robusto

@CowperKettle Not necessarily. They might wonder why a 19th century horse-drawn buggy had modern ball bearing rings in the axles.

Cerberus

The EU is busy developing plans to move medical production chains back to Europe.

Is America doing the same thing?

Robusto

@Cerberus Biden is making some effort to do that.

Not sure where it stands now, but he's talked about it.

Cerberus

4:31 PM

@CowperKettle Yes. I think archaeologists were already confused enough when they dug up the museum at Ur!

Ennigaldi-Nanna's museum

Ennigaldi-Nanna's museum is thought by some historians to be the first museum, although this is speculative. It dates to circa 530 BCE. The curator was Ennigaldi, the daughter of Nabonidus, the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. It was located in the state of Ur, located in the modern-day Dhi Qar Governorate of Iraq, roughly 150 metres (490 ft) southeast of the famous Ziggurat of Ur. == History == When archaeologists excavated certain parts of the palace and temple complex at Ur they determined that the dozens of artifacts, neatly arranged side by side, whose ages varied by centuries, were...

The world's oldest museum was created and managed by a princess.

(As far as we know.)

CowperKettle

Wow

Cerberus

With labels in three different languages.

@Robusto Good.

I suppose there is no immediate hurry, but it must be done.

Robusto

The modern day-glo sign on the back would be another giveaway.

@Cerberus China is evil. We need to stop sucking on that crack pipe, and the sooner the better.

Cerberus

@Robusto Yes, well, I'm not sure whether China's industrial policies with respect to medicines are evil.

On the whole, trade with China and other countries is fine.

But essential goods and services should be kept close.

Robusto

Medicines aren't essential?

Cerberus

4:36 PM

They are.

Robusto

Well, then.

Cerberus

But I don't think China is evil per se.

At the moment, it is the evil Biden who is blocking the delivery of medicines to Europe.

Vaccines.

Robusto

Really? They are closer to 1984 style surveillance of its citizenry than anybody else has yet achieved.

Cerberus

Yes.

Robusto

@Cerberus You'd do the same if you weren't sure you'd need those medicines for your own people.

Cerberus

4:38 PM

But their industry and exports are not necessarily evil. They want to coöperate like anybody else.

@Robusto Well, I have not heard of Europe blocking exports to America that were agreed upon in contracts with pharmaceutical companies?

Robusto

They want to exert their influence at the expense of developing countries, just as England, France, the Netherlands, and the U.S. have done.

Cerberus

And that while America is quite a bit ahead with vaccinations.

Robusto

@Cerberus Is that a question?

Cerberus

I have not heard of it; have you?

Mitch

@M.A.R. Ohhhhh. I thought in that movie if you die in the dream you're dead up a level

Cerberus

4:40 PM

While I have heard of American blocking of exports to Europe.

Robusto

@Cerberus Not in this particular case, no. But let's not pretend Europe does not act out of self-interest when they choose to.

Cerberus

Of course.

Robusto

BTW, speaking of vaccines, I was very impressed with the efficiency of the mass vaccination event yesterday. It went way more smoothly than just about any other mass event I've seen, including music concerts and sporting events.

Mitch

mass event?

Robusto

Event involving thousands of people.

Mitch

4:43 PM

but

Cerberus

But, in this case, the dependence of medicines upon the good will of another country, I'd say China is no eviller than America.

Mitch

what event?

Robusto

@Cerberus You are entitled to your opinion.

Cerberus

I'm not sure, by the way, whether Europe would have blocked the exports of vaccines that were already agreed upon in contracts.

Robusto

@Mitch The explanation is in my text.

Mitch

4:44 PM

which mass vaccination event? Was it on CNN or something?

I don't watch CNN so if it was I missed it

Cerberus

Europe is blocking some exports by companies that fail to fulfil their contractual obligations to Europe, to wit, Astra Zeneca.

Robusto

@Cerberus I have no knowledge of what those contracts, if any, state. And it serves no purpose to speculate absent genuine knowledge.

@Mitch The mass vaccination event I participated in yesterday.

Cerberus

It would probably have been in the papers if it had happened.

Mitch

@Robusto a one time thing?

Cerberus

Things are changing, but Europe has been holier than the Pope with respect to free trade for a long time now (the Pope being America).

Robusto

4:46 PM

@Mitch No. These events are conducted when supplies of the vaccine are received. Basically, thousands of people are vaccinated, limited only by supply.

Cerberus

I'm not saying I blame Biden.

But it shows that one should not be dependent upon other continents for essentials.

Robusto

@Cerberus Now, now, let's not say things we can't take back.

Mitch

@Cerberus are we back to whether the dwarves represented the Jews?

Cerberus

And China is not the problem specifically.

@Robusto But it is true! America is God's representative of the creed of Capitalism, isn't she?

I always suspected the Pope to be female.

Despite the famous chair.

Robusto

OK, I feel my feet leaving the ground at this point.

Cerberus

4:48 PM

Oh?

I suppose the chair must be high.

Mitch

@Robusto you're levitating?

Cerberus

Or it will be difficult to get underneath.

Mitch

maybe he's jumping?

Cerberus

Quite possibly.

Mitch

oh... the chair is too high for his lower legs

I kinda like that

especially if you can swing them back and forth

Robusto

4:49 PM

@Mitch The rather strained allegory is making me levitate.

Mitch

But if you're shorter and that's always the case then it can get old.

Robusto

Everything gets old. Including you.

Mitch

@Robusto sigh

cough

Cerberus

> After two or five years of reign, "Pope Joan" became pregnant and, during an Easter procession, she gave birth to the child on the streets when she fell off a horse. She was publicly stoned to death by the astonished crowd, and according to the legend, removed from the Vatican archives.

As a consequence, certain traditions stated that popes throughout the medieval period were required to undergo a procedure wherein they sat on a special chair with a hole in the seat. A cardinal would have the task of putting his hand up the hole to check whether the pope had testicles, or doing a visual …

Robusto

Unless you don't.

Mitch

4:50 PM

hacking cough

Cerberus

I really wish all this actually happened...

Mitch

That seems to be a pretty elaborate procedure for something that should be a pretty quick tell.

Robusto

@Cerberus Also, are you telling me your country isn't capitalist? I've seen the prices in your shops and restaurants.

Cerberus

@Mitch How?

Mitch

@Robusto look man I don't get the pope = america thing -or- the levitating = I still don't know what

Robusto

4:53 PM

@Mitch My point.

Mitch

@Robusto The worst

Cerberus

@Robusto Certainly. But we have become more capitalist under American influence since WWII.

Mitch

@Robusto Did you just prank me? You just pranked me

Cerberus

That is why the Pope is America.

Robusto

@Cerberus Oh, come on. That is just ... what's the word? ... a lie.

Cerberus

4:54 PM

A lie?

It is a fact.

Robusto

What was all that Dutch East India Company stuff about?

Mitch

The Elves aren't the Americans who came in late to help (in both WWI and WWII) and took all the credit?

Cerberus

1. That was only a small aspect of society; 2. Holland had become less capitalist by 1945.

Mitch

@Cerberus Let's say it is a questionable fact.

Cerberus

Perhaps Holland was the 17th-century Pope of Capitalism.

Robusto

4:55 PM

@Cerberus If it became less capitalist by 1945, that would indicate it had been more capitalist in the past. QED

Cerberus

England the 18th-century Pope.

@Robusto Yes, that is what I'm saying.

Mitch

@Cerberus Open the kimono

Cerberus

But America has definitely been the Pope since 1945.

Robusto

@Cerberus That may be what you think you're saying, but it's not what you said.

Cerberus

Then what did I say?

Robusto

4:56 PM

3 mins ago, by Cerberus

@Robusto Certainly. But we have become more capitalist under American influence since WWII.

Cerberus

And?

Robusto

This implies you were never more capitalist than America "made you."

Cerberus

You were talking about the 17th century.

Mitch

Why bring the pope into this he's got a lot to worry about. Every single little bird with a broken wing that a cat is stalking. He's gotta deal with that too

Cerberus

@Robusto It doesn't imply that (though that may be true).

Robusto

4:57 PM

Come on, let's blame America for all the evils you perceive in your own society.

That relieves you of all responsibility.

Cerberus

We were certainly less capitalist in 1945 than now. Or in 1980.

And, yes, America is a big drive behind that, all around the world.

Robusto

You still had a choice.

Grow up, take responsibility for your actions.

Mitch

Weren't there some riots the other day in the Netherlands?

Cerberus

I think it was America that e.g. forced open the French film industry, to admit foreign (American) competition. Just a tiny example.

Robusto

Otherwise the Netherlands is just a whining child of the American influence.

Cerberus

4:59 PM

@Robusto What does it have to do with responsibility?

I am talking about the source of the modern creed.

Post-war.

Robusto

@Cerberus You blame America as if you had no choice.

Mitch

Wait, more importantly, what do they call the Netherlands in Dutch?

Robusto

You were willing participants. Deal with it.

Mitch

@Robusto Wow. Harsh.

Cerberus

@Robusto That must be a misunderstanding, then. While America exerted pressure, I would not say those who fell for it were puppets without responsibility.

In some countries, there was no way to resist America; but in Europe there was.

Robusto

5:00 PM

So ... willing accomplices then.

Cerberus

And it was resisted to some degree.

But none of that is relevant.

Mitch

There's no way to resist China now

Robusto

Vietnam put up a pretty fair resistance.

@Mitch You could try eating off of paper plates.

Mitch

@Robusto And if I am already using paper plates?

Cerberus

The creed of Capitalism has been led by Pope America I since WWII—that is as uncontroversial as the rotation of the Sun around the Earth.

Oh, wait...

Robusto

5:02 PM

@Mitch Problem solved.

Mitch

@Robusto Nice. For once it works out.

Can you do the excrescence of daylight savings time next?

Cerberus

@Robusto Yes, but many other places were even less able to.

Robusto

@Cerberus They were just as able as Vietnam was. They lacked only the will.

Cerberus

I have to disagree.

Robusto

Even now, your country and others could simply renounce capitalism.

Go ahead, I'll wait.

Cerberus

5:04 PM

In countries where America managed to stage a successful coup d'état, the resulting dictatorships did not leave the will of the people with any choice.

Mitch

@Cerberus What?

Cerberus

And there are many of those countries.

Robusto

@Cerberus What do you think happened in South Vietnam?

Cerberus

But, again, none of this is relevant.

Mitch

@Robusto Renouncing is a big ask. Maybe censuring?

Cerberus

5:04 PM

It's not about ability or responsibility.

Robusto

Can you say "Nguyen Cao Ky"?

Nguyễn Cao Kỳ

Nguyễn Cao Kỳ (listen; 8 September 1930 – 23 July 2011) served as the chief of the Republic of Vietnam Air Force in the 1960s, before leading the nation as the prime minister of South Vietnam in a military junta from 1965 to 1967. Then, until his retirement from politics in 1971, he served as vice president to bitter rival General Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, in a nominally civilian administration.Born in northern Vietnam, Kỳ joined the Vietnamese National Army of the French-backed State of Vietnam and started as an infantry officer before the French sent him off for pilot training. After the French withdrew...

Cerberus

England could gave resisted the European Community in the 1970s, but it did not. But that is irrelevant to the fact that Germany and France were the Popes behind European unification.

Cerberus

5:24 PM

@Robusto So I never meant to say that America converted Europe to capitalism by the sword.

It mainly used a big carrot and some little sticks.

And Europe (like most places) was already capitalist (though not as severely as America).

But America has definitely been trying to spread more intense capitalism around the world, and in Europe as well—which of course would not have been possible if some people in those countries (including Europe) had not believed in its creed as well.

Færd

6:24 PM

> The University of California today (March 16) announced a pioneering open access agreement with the world’s largest scientific publisher, Elsevier, making significantly more of the University’s research available to people worldwide — immediately and at no cost.

universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/…

Cerberus

@Færd Good.

Færd

Yeah. Looks like it's been a long journey, or fight.

Cerberus

The same fight is going on in many places around the world.

But Elsevier probably has a ton of lobbyists.

Færd

Let's hope it's the start of an avalanche.

Though it's probably not.

Cerberus

There have been some laws in Europe.

Demanding open access for publications based on research funded by tax money, which is most research.

But it's not going fast enough.

But it will happen eventually.

Give it ten years.

Færd

6:39 PM

By the time my kid starts to research.

Cerberus

Oh, you're planning ahead.

Færd

Profiting off of tax-funded research. That's not even capitalism.

Cerberus

Stark capitalism often results in situations which are not it.

Færd

@Cerberus For my kid? Sure. She's not going to exist, so I might as well have fun planning out her future.

Cerberus

Capitalism tends to result in oligopolies and regulatory capture, so in a non-free market.

@Færd Why not?

Færd

6:43 PM

@Cerberus Like vaccine companies profiting from government-funded research.

As I believe is the case for the famous American vaccines.

Cerberus

@Færd Yes.

Færd

@Cerberus It's a modest prediction. Extrapolating from my current feelings towards reproduction.

Cerberus

Makes sense.

Robusto

@Cerberus Well, yes. I said something to that effect in reference to China:

2 hours ago, by Robusto

They want to exert their influence at the expense of developing countries, just as England, France, the Netherlands, and the U.S. have done.

Cerberus

Yes.

Færd

7:00 PM

China is up to no good on the international stage. It's right now supporting the Burmese coup d'état, for example. But the tragedies of Western "exertion of influence" in the past centuries are not repeatable in this day and age, even by China, I reckon.

Robusto

@Færd No, but I suppose there's a chance they might be improved upon.

Færd

Uh-huh.

Robusto

China's debt financing in Africa

Now, Africa is a big place, but I think we can all agree that the English, French, Belgians, Dutch and others (including the US) have thoroughly rifled through its resources with a willing hand already. What China is doing now seems like factory farming compared to the former pirate raids for plunder.

Cerberus

For the time being, yes.

> If today America promotes a particular kind of low-road capitalism — a union-busting capitalism of poverty wages, gig jobs and normalized insecurity; a winner-take-all capitalism of stunning disparities not only permitting but awarding financial rule-bending; ... — one reason is that American capitalism was founded on the lowest road there is [: the economy of slave plantations].

nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/…

I'm usually not a fan of whiny articles.

Nor of articles that attempt to find such broad patterns in history.

And some parts of the article are probably inaccurate.

But I have to say I found the overall point somewhat convincing.

Robusto

7:18 PM

I agree with that article in several major ways.

Cerberus

You already know it?

Robusto

Nov 9 '15 at 17:39, by Robusto

In America the only Darwinism we support is social.

@Cerberus Not the article per se, but the position it represents.

Cerberus

> [slavery] also made “all nonslavery appear as freedom,” as the economic historian Stanley Engerman has written. Witnessing the horrors of slavery drilled into poor white workers that things could be worse. So they generally accepted their lot, and American freedom became broadly defined as the opposite of bondage.
It was a freedom that understood what it was against but not what it was for; a malnourished and mean kind of freedom that kept you out of chains but did not provide bread or shelter. It was a freedom far too easily pleased.

Robusto

It's not a new thought.

Cerberus

Ah, OK.

It reminded me of an article I read about Germany.

Robusto

7:20 PM

Germany cares about its people more than my country does about ours, I fear.

Cerberus

How Fascism was perhaps the outgrowth of a militarist and exploitative mentality found in the exploitation of the conquered Slavic people in the lands of the Teutonic Knights, the origin of Prussia.

Of course it is much more complicated.

But the exploitation by the Teutonic Knights is well known, as is Prussia's militarist nature, and the latter's compatibility with fascism.

Robusto

Everything is always much more complicated.

Cerberus

Similarly, centralisation (typical of France since the Central Middle Ages) played a part in the power of the French kings and nobility and clergy, and of the exploitation of the French peasantry, whence the revolution.

@CowperKettle Very cool.

Robusto

@CowperKettle: That vehicle you said you rode in (and posted a picture of in chat) and deafened you, was that a вездеход ? Because I am listening to Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier and he describes that kind of vehicle and gives that name for it.

Feb 28 at 17:44, by CowperKettle

He doesn't make a point of saying how loud it is, though.

M.A.R.

8:02 PM

@Mitch well in that special case in the movie, if you were killed you were thrown into a limbo, a dreamless state, until the sedatives wore off. Except they were sorta dreaming, so shrug. The 'kick' threw them up a level

Mitch

@M.A.R. i thought half the plot hinged on making sure that Satoishi who had gotten shot, was kept alive in the ice castle attack dream or else somethty something Didn't Tom hardy explain the awful consequences of dying in a dream early on?

Also, can you explain reverse entropy to me (for Tenet)? No need to explain Memento, that one totally makes sense.

I'm just sayin that if -I- were the director, I would have done things a little differently in Inception. a little more weird stuff like dreams are, maybe some lucid dreaming, also why so few women?

Christopher Nolan really should have contacted me in the planning stages.

Robusto

Смуглянка - молдаванка | поёт Саша Капустина

►

This kind of song may be Slavic, but the structure is also used in Greek singing as well, I think.

The sudden stop, followed by a chorus that starts slow and speeds up.

And repeats, because it just works so well.

@RegDwigнt: Thoughts? ^

M.A.R.

8:21 PM

@Mitch well yeah that was it. If he died he would have entered a dreamless state, and the couple of real hours would have felt like 50 years. That was the pain that should've been avoided

@Mitch Well, we have three clocks. The biological clock; the time we perceive. Stuff happens and time moves forwards and if you drop a cup that was on the table, it shatters. But, I mean, when you bring space–time continuum into this, just like when you can draw a diagram of a moving object, you can draw a diagram of a moving object through time, so it gets weird and some physicists claim that the past, present and the future exist simultaneously and stuff. Anyway.

The second clock is cosmic. Time moves forward as the universe expands, and if you go back on that diagram, you can mathematically say the time goes backwards as the universe contracts.

The third clock is thermodynamic. We know that entropy (the random arrangements of things and stuff and crap) increases as the time moves forward, that's just the famous second law of thermodynamics. A cup shatters when you drop it on the floor into pretty disorderly and sharp pieces. So, again, if you look at the parts of the mathematical diagram of an earlier time, you can say the entropy decreases as you go backward in time

You can prove that the second and third clocks always work in unison. The entropy will always increase when the universe is expanding.

So, you encounter a question: We know that the rate of the acceleration of the expansion of a universe is pretty close to a critical value where it would have expanded forever. Nearly, but not quite. So the universe will have a contracting phase, just like it's now in an expanding phase. What happens to the other clocks at the contracting phase?

Well, since entropy used to increase with expansion, now it's going to decrease simultaneously with the contraction of the universe. A shattered cup will patch itself up and get back on the table and yell "ANAKIN, I HAVE THE HIGH GROUND"

That's what we expect will happen. If life manages to be present in the contracting phase, we would be remembering the future, but not the past (because what's happening in our brains is a physical process that has the same cosmic and thermodynamic clocks, it would happen in reverse when those clocks reverse)

The late prof. Hawking used to say it's unlikely life will exist then, I forgot why, but the entirety of Tenet hinges on the reversal of the thermodynamic clock for some objects, and how it sounds cool when we try to apply our normal biological-clock logic to it.

It's like Nolan was going backwards and forwards on a diagram at the same time

Some objects got more orderly (a shattered glass got fixed), cups unshattered themselves

I dunno how will works with all this though. It's not like you tell the shattered cup "here kitty kitty kitty" and it will decide to land on your palm, as the film seemed to suggest

8:43 PM

But anyway the whole point of the movie was how this whole inverted thing messed up BlackKklansman's mind and he was able to retain his humanity throughout his existential crisis about free will, while Sator had lost his

@Robusto heh, I need to watch it later

Robusto

@M.A.R. :thumbsup:

It's a parody of this song:

Naughty by Nature - O.P.P. (Official Music Video)

►

Which samples and gets a lot of its energy from this song:

ABC

►

Now you know.

It might be better to watch those in reverse order.

Just so, you know, you know where all this shit comes from.

Cerberus

9:27 PM

@M.A.R. Why is a shattered cup less orderly than a whole cup?

Mitch

9:38 PM

@Cerberus there are more ways to be shattered than to be a whole cup

Cerberus

@Mitch How so?

And how do you count 1 "way"?

Mitch

@Cerberus basic combinatorics

Cerberus

Those concepts sound rather human to me.

To the universe, a cup is not a cup, but some number of particles in a meaningless arrangement.

Mitch

to oversimplify, forget the complexity of the organization of an object and think of something much simpler, like rice on a chess board. Suppose you have 1 grain of rice. There are 64 configurations of that grain on the chessboard.

Now suppose you have two grains. Still 64 configurations where both grains fall in the same square. But there are {64 choose 2} = 64*63/2 = 2016 configurations where they are on different squares.

Keep increasing the number of grains. The number of 'nice' configurations (where they all appear on one square) is small, but the number of 'messy' or complicated configurations grows exponentially in n.

@Cerberus You could say that any single configuration is as likely as any other. But there are more configurations that are like the shattered cup than there are like the usable cup. Yes, we as humans are saying this one nice cup is the only one that we care for out of the many even though it is just as likely as any individual other scattering of 'cup' molecules. But there are very few of the nice, usable, unshattered cup configurations.

Cerberus

@Mitch But how do you determine what 'nice' is?

I mean, nice: says who?

Humans?

Mitch

9:54 PM

Oh... there's a much better example that is already out there. One possible arrangement of air molecules in a room is that while all bouncing around, at one distinct point in time, they all happen to have moved to exactly one half of the room, and anybody caught in the other half is in a vacuum. We tend not to worry about this situation, even though by probability it is always possible, because it has a very small possibility.

There are just astronomically more possibilities of configurations of the air molecules being spread across the entire room.

@Cerberus Yes, totally.

Cerberus

@Mitch If so, then it is merely a human concept, entropy?

Mitch

all concepts are human

Cerberus

Because what you are saying sounds awfully like the arguments people from intelligent Design use.

Mitch

except for dog concepts. those are bones buried in the backyard.

Cerberus

"There are so many ways in which your eye could be blind or have poor vision, and yet this one shape happened! That is Meaningful!"

Mitch

9:57 PM

@Cerberus I don't know their arguments very well, but I presume they attempt to sound scientific, just like I am trying to do.

@Cerberus All I'm talking about is statistical thermodynamics and entropy.

Cerberus

They are trying to prove that a working eye cannot come to be by random chance.

Mitch

self-replicating molecules is often considered a counterexample to entropy. I think the usual physical response to that is that somewhere else entropy is getting worse faster to take into account the local decrease in entropy.

@Cerberus I think evolution is a good explanation of how it is not random.

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