English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Xanne

00:01

Ursula Van der Lynden always seems so defensive.

Cerberus

@Robusto Exactly.

As though a cat could be hiding inside.

Robusto

Haha, of course.

Cerberus

@Xanne But, honestly, the basket seems to much more interesting than the scroll pieces or the skeleton.

I wonder why the news only mentions the scrolls, maybe the skeleton, but the basket last of all.

Robusto

@Xanne What did she do this time?

Cerberus

Who is that?

Belgian or American?

Robusto

00:03

@Cerberus Basketry hardly stands a chance next to religion and parenthood.

@Cerberus German.

Cerberus

Then I do not know her.

Robusto

I think she's Minister of Defense for Germany? Or was?

Cerberus

Unless you mean Von der Leyen?

Xanne

To me the basket is a preservation marvel but has less to tell.

Cerberus

President of the European Commission.

Robusto

00:04

Yes.

Cerberus

There are probably 100,000 skeletons from that period.

Robusto

And yes, von der Leyen.

Cerberus

And many more scrolls from their period (only 2000 years old, I think?).

Robusto

Haha, I read Xanne's text and typed it in as von der Leyen anyway.

Cerberus

But only one basket.

I'm a bit of a Ursula fan.

Well, not fan.

But she stands up to the English for us.

Xanne

00:06

Von der Leyen, now wringing her hands over vaccine exports.

Cerberus

With their impolite populism and violation of treaties.

Well, she has reason to be mad.

Robusto

@Cerberus That ~~ship~~ kingdom has sailed.

Cerberus

Astra Zeneca is exporting vaccines to England, violating the contract and lying about it, too.

Xanne

Ah, I see. She was considered a possible successor to Angela once.

Cerberus

She has risen quite high now!

There shouldn't have been conflicts over vaccine exports.

But there are.

America is blocking the export of lots of vaccine stuff to Europe.

England is getting them from Europe through highly questionable a back door.

Robusto

00:10

@Cerberus My son's first job out of school was at Astra Zeneca.

Cerberus

Total vaccinations thus far.

Europe is getting the short end of the stick, so Ursula is mad.

And that ball includes England, which has received lots of vaccines produced here.

Robusto

raises hand I'm vaccinated! Yay!

Xanne

Oh wow. Well, they shouldn’t have let the A-Z vaccine get trashed.

Cerberus

What do you mean?

A-Z was very late to supply sufficient data for approval to the EMA.

And there were problems with their data even after that.

Robusto

@Cerberus This chart isn't very helpful. Is that total vaccines or vaccines per capita or what?

Cerberus

00:12

Such as, no data for people over 65.

@Robusto Total number of vaccinations.

Robusto

Wow, the US is about double China.

Xanne

The blood clot business . . .

Robusto

Yeah, nothing spoils a vaccine party like DVT.

Cerberus

You mean, double all of Asia.

Robusto

Yes.

Cerberus

00:13

@Xanne Oh, that. Well, that's only a few days old, isn't it?

Robusto

But the US number includes Canada and Mexico I guess.

Cerberus

Yes, but those probably don't have a lot of vaccinations.

North America is 109 million, Europe (including Russia) is 26 million.

Xanne

The US bought on spec. Turned out to be a good call.

Cerberus

Of which a lot are in England.

I'm not entirely sure those figures are completely up to date, though.

@Xanne What do you mean by on spec?

Robusto

It means accepting some risk on an unknown quantity.

Cerberus

00:16

Europe bought a ton of vaccines. The contract with A-Z was signed the day before England's contract with A-Z.

@Robusto Haven't all countries accepted the risk that the quantity and speed were uncertain?

The European contract with A-Z is mostly very similar to the English one.

Robusto

@Cerberus "Quantity" in this case doesn't mean amount; more like entity.

Mark Giraffe

I am a shenanigan-speaking designer.

Cerberus

And yet A-Z failed to deliver nearly as many vaccines to the EU.

Xanne

Yes, it means you don’t know if it will work or not, but you pay for production anyway, in advance.

Cerberus

Well, of course; all rich countries have done so.

But I believe America is blocking various exports related to vaccines to Europe.

I'm not 100% up to date on the details.

Europe, England, and America have all invested pre-emptively in the research and production of vaccines by many pharmaceutical companies, larger and small.

And rightly so.

And they also signed contracts with those companies on deliveries.

Robusto

00:21

> Von der Leyen added that the United States and Britain had systems in place that effectively blocked the export of COVID-19 vaccines.

Cerberus

Whenever meeting the agreed numbers or dates was not possible, one would expect a company to deliver to each contract pro rata.

But A-Z didn't do that.

Robusto

That was all I could find about what you said, @Cerberus.

Cerberus

Right.

Robusto

I would like to see more, since a one-sentence assertion would seem to require a bit more, uh, detail.

The vast majority of the stories involve EU/UK problems.

@Cerberus Meanwhile, the EU is being accused of the same thing.

So, as usual, plenty of blame to go around.

Cerberus

> I am also shocked when I hear the accusations of ‘vaccine nationalism’ against the EU. Here again, the facts do not lie. The United Kingdom and the United States have imposed an outright ban on the export of vaccines or vaccine components produced on their territory. But the European Union, the region with the largest vaccine production capacity in the world, has simply put in place a system for controlling the export of doses produced in the EU. Our objective: to prevent companies from which we have ordered and pre-financed doses from exporting them to other advanced countries when they …

This is from the President of the European Council (I think).

So take it with a grain of salt.

@Robusto Yes, the EU also blocks some exports.

But, if I am to believe the papers, much less so than do America and England.

As to the Australian example, the entire country has only a handful of infections, I believe. And the Australian government agreed that it didn't need those vaccines right now.

Robusto

00:27

@Cerberus Yeah. There is no such thing as a "national" pharmaceutical company anymore. They're all multi-national.

@Cerberus Well, of course your news will have that slant.

Cerberus

Somehow, I don't have a huge deal of trust in the reputation of English newspapers...

Robusto

I don't either. That's where Rupert Murdoch started off in the mendacity business, isn't it?

Cerberus

@Robusto I'm not sure anyone has a full picture of what's going on.

Yes, Murdoch is a problem in the Anglo-Saxon countries. Or at least in Australia, England, America.

I do know that the assertions by A-Z and the British government, about the A-Z contracts and exports, have been debunked.

Robusto

Then he came to America and brought us Faux News and all their mind control of the (not necessarily) working class.

Cerberus

And I believe his more extreme son ousted his less extreme son.

From leading the company.

Robusto

00:31

Yeah. They are pure evil.

Aug 4 '20 at 18:40, by Robusto

Cerberus

Exactly.

Is that Murdoch?

Elections were today.

The far right has regained a few seats.

They are now at 28 seats again, just as in 2002.

But at least they are now divided, they are three parties now.

Robusto

@Cerberus Yes.

Cerberus

And the cordon sanitaire seems to be functioning now, i.e. nobody wants to form a coalition with them any more.

The cordon sanitaire always worked well in Belgium.

Robusto

@Cerberus In your country?

Cerberus

Yes.

The far right are now at 18.7%.

Which seems stable, manageable enough.

But it was hoped they would lose seats.

And predicted.

Robusto

00:35

They are a cancer everywhere.

Cerberus

Well, the difference is only a few seats anyway.

Yeah.

Mitch

01:34

@Xanne So basket: 10k years ago. child's skeleton: 6k. Scrolls: 2k.

Didn't the scrolll people notice holy shit a dead kid is in here?

Cerberus

@Mitch I believe it is a very large cave.

Mitch

or better... hey let's put our scrolls in the big basket with the dead kid

Cerberus

Sure, they could have done that.

Mitch

@M.A.R. Does everyone know that 'Isle of Dogs' is homophonic with 'I love dogs'?

Cerberus

After the bones had dried.

Mitch

01:39

@Cerberus big missed opportunity

Cerberus

How long does that take?

Mitch

a couple hours

Cerberus

I don't think even the desert is that dry.

Mitch

The atacama is pretty dry

Cerberus

But the entire body needs to rot away first.

And be eaten.

Then the bones dry.

Then the cleaners need to come to put them in the basket.

Mitch

01:41

it's why the Inca followed the Andes which normally such high mountains are avoided for empires

Cerberus

Because they liked dry?

Mitch

they avoided the desert

Cerberus

Ah.

Mitch

and stayed up in the moist livable mountains

Cerberus

And there was nothing else except mountains?

Mitch

01:43

I don't think they went down the other side into the amazon. Not sure.

Cerberus

You could have a very loooong empire along the edge of the mountains.

Does English have a word for gebergte?

Mitch

montagne?

Cerberus

All I can think of is mountain range.

Is that English?

Mitch

yeah mountain range

Cerberus

A gebergte in Dutch is the mass noun for bergen.

Mitch

01:45

mountains is the mass noun for mountain in English

Cerberus

Gedierte is a mass of animals, usually ongedierte, a mass of bad animals (vermin).

Geboefte is a mass of criminals.

Mitch

I'm gonna gebarf

Conrado

@Cerberus The Inca did have a long empire.

Cerberus

@Mitch It's a fun word even in Dutch.

@Conrado Mmm but not extremely so.

Mitch

@Cerberus huh

Cerberus

01:47

This is not just the edge of a gebergte.

Mitch

that looks like they were totally in the Atacama

Cerberus

I only know the Atacama is in Chile.

I don't remember where.

Conrado

Well, at the southern end we're the Mapuches and Huilliches, who were tough cookies even for the Inca.

Mitch

Southern Peru too

Cerberus

The South and Central American Empires looked cool.

And they played football matches.

Conrado

01:49

But the mountains are not very moist on the side toward the Pacífico.

Cerberus

I'm sure the dude appreciates it.

Mitch

Even down towards you?

Cerberus

Heh.

Mitch

Isn't the argentinian side the drier side as you go south?

Cerberus

Don't look at me!

Conrado

01:51

@Mitch Well here it's the other way: the wind brings water from the Pacific, and drops it as it rises over the Andes.

Mitch

right, and then the wind is all dry as it continues on to Argentina?

Conrado

But in the Atacama area, it takes a great many acres to sustain a single llama. The Inca made survival an art there. I admire their persistence.

@Mitch exactamente.

Cerberus

I hear both of you use Inca as a plural.

Mitch

Also, empires don't spring up out of nothing, they conquered all sorts of smaller kingdoms or groups all along the Andes

@Cerberus I don't hear anything at all except the clickety clack of typing

Cerberus

@Mitch Of course.

@Mitch But I type so silently.

Mitch

01:58

maps make it look like it just all pops into existence all over

Cerberus

The Incas has indentured slavery, I think. As did many states small and large.

Conrado

@Mitch And that is the Patagonia

Cerberus

I.e. if you went bankrupt, you were forced to sell yourself into slavery.

I don't remember the details.

Conrado

@Cerberus States (or More exactly, people within states) have often found it convenient to have slaves. This is a world where the big fish eat the little fish. How else would they build Machu Picchu? Or the White House? Or the Buckingham Palace? Or you name it? Not defending the practice, you know. Just admitting that it happens.

Cerberus

Yes.

Slavery was quite common.

And there are similar ways to exploit people that still exist.

And which are hardly better, or even worse.

Conrado

02:07

Wal-Mart?

Cerberus

Hah.

Conrado

Quechua word of the day: "Diospagaraski".

It means roughly "Thank you"

Borrowed from the Spanish for "God will pay".

I don't know if they said "thank you" at all before colonization.

Mitch

@Cerberus What?

Screw those guys

Cancel them

uh...

Cerberus

@Conrado Funny.

Mitch

already taken care of

@Conrado Supposedly...

the jews who built (some of) the pyramids..

were not necessarily slaves...

but possibly employees?

I heard that somewhere.

Conrado

02:14

@Mitch Ah, Yes.

But in Chile, for example, many undocumented Peruvian labourers are similarly employed in construction work. They are cheaper than us, you know, and they work hard!

@Cerberus I don't know why that is.

britannica.com/topic/Inca

Also, the Inuit.

But, the Aztecs.

Much of the modern world is built on oppression of this sort.

Cerberus