English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

2:54 AM

What is the difference between a dictator and a demagogue?

I would like tio know the more subtle part of it.

3:21 AM

@RajorshiKoyal To dictate is to command other people, tell them what they must do.

A dictator is an authoritarian leader, one who has all the power in a state.

A demagogue is from demos "people" and ago "lead": it is someone who leads the (common) people, but in a negative way. He probably leads them using false promises or misleading ideas. He may have little power or much: it depends. The word is almost synonymous with populist.

Examples of a dictator: Hitler, Stalin, Mao.

Example of a demagogue: Trump.

Some demagogues become dictators.

4:10 AM

What is meant by "gone over the top?"

4:36 AM

@Robusto that's kinda what I'm saying. Parts of 1984 have been happening for a long time, and other often more gruesome parts have never been true and will never be, and Xinnie the Pooh bullying a small island besides it and the US' twofaced response to it won't change that. It's just been business as usual

@Mitch paywalled

@RajorshiKoyal "over the top" means "unnecessary exaggerated or hyperbolic"

@RajorshiKoyal if it's still that article you're trying to make sense of, I personally think it was a poor choice.

@M.A.R. Could not get you..Will you elaborate slightly?

4:55 AM

@RajorshiKoyal which part?

Which was a poor choice?

Why "Give her her pen" is correct, while "Give him him pen" is incorrect?

5:34 AM

Word of the day: purlin

@RajorshiKoyal That backchannel article about India v. Pakistan. Language-wise, it seemed to be written by a non-native speaker, which is why it was riddled with nonsense. Ethics-wise, the article was not trying to say much anyway, it was like "here are several fancy words to pander to your jingoistic hate of the Pakistanis"

@CowperKettle Give me my pen so I might answer why giving him his pen isn't wrong

Where did you find the article?

@CowperKettle That's like half of astrophysics

"We have no idea and a single discovery in the near future might render all this speculation worthless, but here's some incomprehensible math anyway"

@RajorshiKoyal You linked it yourself

ok..Did you read the article?

I skimmed through it

Something about heroic Indians dispelling myths of cooperation and civilized talk between the two countries?

6:33 AM

My vitamin D blood test result came in, at 45.

The normal range is 30 to 100.

I've been taking 30 000 IU of vitamin D per week for the last 2.5 years.

The blood level actually slightly decreased, from 47 in August 2020 to 45 now.

So the daily intake of 4000 IU does not lead to an overdose, at least in me.

1 hour later…

7:59 AM

@CowperKettle I'm not sure the measurements are that precise to call that a decrease

8:09 AM

@M.A.R. I agree, I would say the level stayed roughly the same

It costs a lot to take a test though. I may ask them what the precision of the test is. I once asked them about the precision of the glycated haemoglobin test, and said I was a diabetic. They called the actual lab technician, and he led me to the lab and showed the machine they use to measure HbAC. A high-tech-looking French apparatus.

But anyway, the body's kinda good at handling vitamins, if we don't get all that other crap in there

I first measured my vitamin D level in the late summer of 2018, when I was feeling tired all the time and my daily urinal cortisol was always about 180% the upper limit. I discovered that my vitamin D was a bit low, at 19 ng/mL. This is not a deficiency, only a slight decline.

@CowperKettle well none of that matters much. You can have HPLC, or you can have essentially dip sticks with fancy goggles. Therapeutically anyway, 45 and 47 don't differ at all, but 10 and 60 might be

@CowperKettle oh a few months after the transplant, I asked the doctor for a vit D test and it was 9!

@M.A.R. My mother's result was 9 in the fall of 2018. That is low!

@CowperKettle Yeah they're kinda as accurate as that looks

I mean, there is a lot of human element

And none of it is blind, because it's not anyone's research project

The good news is, if you're a diabetic or something, the levels will differ so greatly that a little error doesn't go a long way

8:18 AM

Putin's daugher started a medical company, and it showed a profit of 3800% in 2020 mbk-news.appspot.com/news/puzarabotala

Great to have such a talented daughter.

8:33 AM

Today I went shopping and noticed a couple of folks rummaging in the garbage containers near my house.

I wonder whether in other countries people do that. In Iran?

There are a lot of very poor people who drink a lot and go and collect bottles and beer/juice cans in order to exchange them for money.

Scientists reveal a microchip that senses COVID-19 in your body BEFORE you show symptoms

3 hours later…

12:01 PM

@CowperKettle rummaging how? Not to find food, like they show the homeless do in the US, but finding plastic bottles or cardboard boxes to sell, yeah definitely

@CowperKettle THE RUMORS WERE TRUE

Though I dunno, recently I think rummaging the trash for food would be on the rise, per my expectation

There's poor, and there's the unbelievable, hopeless poverty in "traditionally" poor neighborhoods

I haven't seen much of that, God knows what goes on in those places sigh

Robusto

12:35 PM

@CowperKettle Careful with the Vitamin D. Taking too much can cause kidney stones to accrete.

@CowperKettle I think you're joking, right? "Her pen" uses the feminine possessive pronoun. The corresponding masculine possessive pronoun is his.

@M.A.R. Ain't that the truth.

@CowperKettle There certainly are poor, homeless people in the US. Rummaging in the trash for food is so common there's a name for it: dumpster diving.

@Robusto Yes, it's a joke from Facebook

@Robusto That's why I've been taking blood tests every 6 months, but thus far the levels are far below 100 ng/mL, the level after which stones may occur

I guess I'd have to take not 30 000 IU/week but maybe 200 000 IU/week to get to the dangerous level.

Robusto

@CowperKettle It's a combination of factors. Insufficient hydration can work with Vitamin D to accrete kidney stones at lower levels. Athletes, be warned.

I'll be reducing my intake to 20 000 IU/week during the summer months.

1:19 PM

@Robusto In the 1930s, the USSR built an airplane with 8 engines and a wingspan equal to Boeint 747. Unluckily, it was brought down by collision with a small plane that was doing aerobatic figures.

This is only a single wing of it.

There was a walking space inside wings with access to engines

Tupolev ANT-20

The Tupolev ANT-20 Maksim Gorki (Russian: Туполев АНТ-20 "Максим Горький") was a Soviet eight-engine aircraft, the largest in the world during the 1930s. Its wingspan was similar to that of a modern Boeing 747, and was not exceeded until the 64.6-metre (212 ft) wingspan Douglas XB-19 heavy bomber prototype first flew in 1941. == Overview == The ANT-20 was designed by Andrei Tupolev, using German engineer Hugo Junkers' original all-metal aircraft design techniques from 1918. It was constructed between 4 July 1933 and 3 April 1934, and was one of two aircraft of its kind built by the Soviets. The...

Robusto

@CowperKettle That's rather ingenious.

And then there's this one:

Antonov An-225 Mriya

The Antonov An-225 Mriya (Ukrainian: Антонов Ан-225 Мрія, lit. 'dream' or 'inspiration'; NATO reporting name: Cossack) is a strategic airlift cargo aircraft that was designed by the Antonov Design Bureau in the Ukrainian SSR within the Soviet Union during the 1980s. It is powered by six turbofan engines and is the heaviest aircraft ever built, with a maximum takeoff weight of 640 tonnes (710 short tons; 630 long tons). It also has the largest wingspan of any aircraft in operational service. The single example built has the Ukrainian civil registration UR-82060. A second airframe with a slightly...

@Robusto Yes, it is too bad there are only 2 of these

It features in the movie 2012, AFAIK. Or maybe its smaller variant.

2:02 PM

2:18 PM

This is serious, large-caliber, prime-time-TV preparation for a big war against Ukraine.

If the US and Europe do not stand firmly this time, the next time the price for stopping Putin's regime will be higher. Like it was with Hitler's regime.

Mitch

2:42 PM

@M.A.R. Argh... it's paywalled for me now too. I don't know how I got to see the graph the first time.

anyway, the graph shows that a lot of people eat a lot of bread, and different countries are different.

3 hours later…

6:00 PM

@CowperKettle Hmm that sounds pretty bad.

@CowperKettle :|

> Ukraine said on Friday it would not launch an offensive against pro-Russia separatists controlling two regions in the east, as fears grow of a major escalation in a long-running conflict.
...

> "Of course, nobody is planning to move toward war and in general, nobody accepts the possibility of such a war," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a televised interview on Sunday.

President Vladimir Putin's spokesman added that "nobody also accepts the possibility of civil war in Ukraine."

— The Moscow Times, which I believe is independent?