English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

12:33 AM

@Cerberus ugh. A whopping five people running for Latin mod, and I don't really know any of them. (I do recognize four of the five handles, but that's about it.) Any pointers?

Cerberus

@RegDwigнt Three would be good candidates (Adam, Draconis, CMW).

One less so, Tyler.

The fifth one is a bit of an unknown.

CMW and Draconis are the most knowledgeable ones.

Adam is probably the nicest one.

But I'm impressed you recognised so many names!

I would be happy to have any of the three I mentioned as colleagues.

CowperKettle

2:24 AM

The Schwarzchild radius of an apple is about $10^{-28}$ m. The radius of a proton is about $10^{-15}$ m. — Andrew yesterday

An apple a day keeps a proton away.

26

Q: If I touched a black hole with a small mass (the mass of an apple), would I die?

I know that a typical stellar black hole would spaghettify someone who crosses its event horizon. Is this also true for a hypothetical tiny black hole with a small mass (the mass of an apple)? Would someone touching such a black hole spiral into it and get dead?

CowperKettle

2:37 AM

Starship | SN15 | High-Altitude Flight Test

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It landed safely at last. Will we actually live to see people walking on Mars?

I hope Russian engineers someday repeat this.

CowperKettle

3:12 AM

@M.A.R. - Food delivery in Tabriz, 1960 (from Twitter)

Cerberus

@CowperKettle This is probably some sort of show or contest, not real delivery.

I think those people are starting at the cyclist, not at the camera!

I think camerae were not uncommon in Persian cities in the 1960s.

CowperKettle

@Cerberus Ah!

I thought it was just a routine street scene.

Because in Russia I see such scenes every day.

Cerberus

I mean, consider how likely it is for someone to cycle around with twenty very hot tajines that have just been taken off the fire?

At least those look like smallish tajines?

@CowperKettle Haha really, like that?

CowperKettle

Tajine

A tajine or tagine is a Berber dish, named after the earthenware pot in which it is cooked. It is also called maraq or marqa. == Etymology == Arabic طجين ṭažin is derived from Berber ṭajin "shallow earthen pot", from Ancient Greek τάγηνον tágēnon "frying-pan, saucepan". == Origin == The history of tagine dates back to the time of Harun al-Rashid, the fifth Abbasid Caliph. The earliest written records about the concept of cooking in a tajine appear in the famous One Thousand and One Nights, an Arabic-language story collection from the ninth century.Today, the cooking-pot and its traditional broth...

@Cerberus Yes

I should snap a picture someday

Cerberus

Do!

CowperKettle

3:19 AM

Word of the day: tajine

Cerberus

But somehow I don't believe you will see people cycling around with twenty seething cooking-pots on their heads.

3

Especially if they have only a single one.

Monocephalids are just inherently unstable.

And they lack the fur to prevent third-degree burns all over over their naked bodies.

CowperKettle

Cerberus

Better, but not good enough.

Less bad, I should say.

CowperKettle

4:20 AM

> Arabic طجين ṭažin is derived from Berber ṭajin "shallow earthen pot", from Ancient Greek τάγηνον tágēnon "frying-pan, saucepan".

Every Sperm is Sacred - Monty Python's The Meaning of Life

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7

A: Can I say "What image do you have about my country?"

The corpus from english-corpora.org/coca/ contains a few instances of "image about". Sadly the website really dislikes hotlinking, so any users who would like to personally repeat the results I have found will need to perform a (free) registration and enter the query themselves. But here are a fe...

Interesting. I would have never used "image about"

Xanne

5:20 AM

“Image of” would be idiomatic.

CowperKettle

6:46 AM

CowperKettle

9:56 AM

Word of the day: pleural effusion

CowperKettle

10:18 AM

by Christopher Smart

CowperKettle

12:10 PM

Quantum reinforcement learning during human decision-making

CowperKettle

12:32 PM

Russian proxy Donbas ‘republics’ criminalize ‘defamatory’ criticism on the Internet

Russia does love puppeteering its puppet states.

Russia has registered "Sputnik Lite", a one-shot version of the vaccine. tvrain.ru/news/…

Claims 79% efficacy

CowperKettle

12:55 PM

Last week, for the first time since the Soviet era, the Kremlin officially classified opposition to its rule as a criminal offense - Washington Post

CowperKettle

1:54 PM

> Here, work to extend the Rue de Rivoli continues at night by electric light (1854).

Electric lighting in 1854. Amazing.

Probably arc light.

M.A.R.

2:50 PM

Or death ray

@CowperKettle heh

@CowperKettle yeah we're cool like that

CowperKettle

3:31 PM

@M.A.R. I tend to believe that it will work, although I always doubt Russian officials.

Better a single dose than none

CowperKettle

3:53 PM

@M.A.R. I should visit Tabriz

Take part in some running event.

Leonard Sax

Leonard Sax is an American psychologist and a practicing family physician. He is best known as the author of three books for parents: Boys Adrift, Girls on the Edge, and Why Gender Matters. According to his web site, he is currently employed as a physician at a healthcare facility in Chester County Pennsylvania, where he also resides. == Biography == Sax grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where he was the third of three children. Sax graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1980 with a bachelor's degree in biology. He completed the combined M.D.-Ph.D. program...

I downloaded an audiobook by him, but I think it will turn out bunkum

I'm running out of fresh audiobooks to listen to.

Davo

4:28 PM

Somebody's been working hard. I've never seen the Close Votes queue empty!

CowperKettle

4:45 PM

Here's to hardworkers! 🚧

"And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim" (Hopkins)

Mitch

4:57 PM

@Davo wait...would the newly instated rule of 3 votes to close -empty- out the entire queue?

Davo

5:07 PM

@Mitch

Possibly. Good thought.

CowperKettle

5:59 PM

As it goes full authoritarian, the Kremlin is targeting the last vestiges of civil society and independent media

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle I think your only rude awakening would be that we probably suck at preserving our important landmarks and tourist resorts compared to the rest of the world. Oh, and that no one speaks Russian here

CowperKettle

Oh. Maybe they all speak English?

M.A.R.

The food will be great. You'll regret leaving Tabriz if you try some of the cuisine that chain restaurants can't do better

I mean, I told this tourist that the food is great, but they were looking for hamburgers. Like dude, you can get hamburgers travelling 20 feet to your kitchen, you don't need to visit Tabriz for that

CowperKettle

I still remember that I almost died from over-eating in Tashkent. It was great food everywhere, despite there being Soviet Union times.

Mitch

@M.A.R. Are there chain chelokebabi in Tabriz? outside of Tabriz?

M.A.R.

6:02 PM

@CowperKettle Hahaha I guess that's another rude awakening. No, people here can only speak Turkish and Persian

Mitch

How about in Azerbaijan? All three?

CowperKettle

I'll have to learn Persian then. Then I could also converse with local Tajiks in Yekaterinburg when I get home.

Because the Tajik language is almost Persian.

M.A.R.

@Mitch Well chains aren't really a thing here all that much. Chain supermarkets are only gaining popularity these last few years. Well, not popularity, probably just more rich people looking to get richer. If the restaurant is really successful the owner opens up a second and rarely the third place, but that's a pretty short chain

@CowperKettle Well I can say that because Russian is so alien to me, learning Persian for a Russian must be kinda hard as well

Mitch

@M.A.R. Koubideh King

M.A.R.

McKoufteh

Mitch

6:05 PM

Beat me to it

CowperKettle

M.A.R.

Hmm, I didn't know about all those blots in Iraq

Trade centers probably

Mitch

I thought that Nagorno-karabak was taken back by Azerbaijan last December?

M.A.R.

Like, in the Kurdistan province here we have the city Baneh, which is sorta Smuggle downtown

Mitch

'sorta Smuggle'? That sounds really cute.

M.A.R.

6:07 PM

Well the government imposes really heavy tariffs on everything, so getting something for the price it is in Iraq is really appealing

Ignoring the embarrassing situation between dollar and rial

We should just leave those two in a room to sort it out

Hmm, that's probably why Baneh has waned in popularity in the recent years.

Mitch

I didn't realize so much of the cat's head is Azeri. or rather how far to the east it goes. That point is almost Teheran, right?

M.A.R.

Yep

Although people in the Qazvin and Zanjan provinces are sorta just leaving Turkish behind

Mitch

But everybody learns Persian in school and uses it at work right?

Azeri only at home?

or is it more complex than that?

M.A.R.

@Mitch Well unless there's someone who can't understand Turkish, people talk in Turkish at work

Mitch

how often is that?

in your town

which isn't so far east, right?

M.A.R.

6:11 PM

@Mitch Well, more complex as in we're out of touch with the world with many things

Mitch

Like McDonalds

CowperKettle

In the USSR, everybody had to speak Russian..

M.A.R.

@Mitch The cat's head is East Azerbaijan province. Tabriz is right besides the Urmiah lake, the white thing in all the blue

@Mitch Not often, if you take most sorts of work into account

Mitch

Oh I thought that was lake Van. Is Van the bigger one inside Turkey?

M.A.R.

I mean, people switch to Persian whenever it's necessary at most places, but then back to Turkish

@Mitch Yep

Cerberus

6:13 PM

@CowperKettle They're made Nagorno-Karabach awfully small, haven't they?

At least it's there.

Mitch

@M.A.R. not often? menaing it's rare to have an all Azeri speaking business, or rare to have at least one non-Azeri speaking person (let's say in Tabriz)

Cerberus

@Mitch Only part of it. And that doesn't change what language the people there speak, because I think deportations are only partial (they do happen, though).

@Mitch The cat's head...good one.

M.A.R.

@Mitch Everyone opts for all Azeri speaking, they would switch easily and without thought for a Persian client, and then back to Turkish. IOW, people don't speak Persian unless they have to. But in the provinces near Tehran, people don't speak Turkish except maybe at home and unless they have to.

You can't demand people speak Turkish, because Persian is the official language

CowperKettle

Can a person pass exams at school in Turkish/Azeri, if he chooses?

Cerberus

@M.A.R. It's funny you call it Turkish.

Turkish and Azeri are not fully mutually intelligible, are they?

M.A.R.

6:19 PM

@CowperKettle same thing here with Persian. To pretend that they care for the regional cultures, they sometimes have one propaganda ad or another featuring people wearing 'traditional' clothes that no one really wears IRL. It's all a bunch of nonsense, they crush local culture because it's not in their master plan

CowperKettle

@M.A.R. In the beginning of the USSR, for almost a decade there was a policy of developing local languages, but then it was dropped.

M.A.R.

@Cerberus Well when I read Turkish Turkish, I kinda understand it, maybe not right away. I can't really understand them when they're speaking though, but here we always call it "Azeri Turkish" and I've always considered it a dialect of Turkish, not a different language, although it's well on the way of being one

CowperKettle

The USSR even started transitioning some local languages into the Latin script, but then reversed this.

M.A.R.

I can almost understand Azerbaijani Turkish with ease, but they have some weird vocabulary that we probably mostly have replaced with Persian counterparts in the last couple of generations or so.

CowperKettle

> Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran (who spoke South Azerbaijani) met with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk of Turkey (who spoke Turkish) in 1934 and were filmed speaking together.

Cerberus

6:21 PM

@M.A.R. Why not call it Turkic?

M.A.R.

@Cerberus I have no idea what to call it, but that kinda distinction can be pretty useful.

Cerberus

Right.

M.A.R.

In Persian it's "Torki-e Azari". Azeri Turkish. Or Turkic, or anything else. shrug

CowperKettle

> In a 2017 study, Iranian Azerbaijanis scored in average 56% of receptive intelligibility in spoken language of Turkish. (DOI: 10.1080/2331186X.2017.1326653)

Cerberus

I speak Germanic, but not German.

@CowperKettle Is that high?

CowperKettle

6:23 PM

I dunno

Cerberus

It could also be because there is much contact between northeast Iran and Turkey.

(Although of course most people in southeastern Turkey will speak Kurdish, not Turkish.)

M.A.R.

It means one out of two sentences I guess, and I probably can't understand that much.

CowperKettle

qaz = goose (funny, in Russian it is гусь, gus')

Cerberus

That sounds worse than between German and Dutch, but only because we have lots of contact with the German language.

M.A.R.

A recent fad here that was concurrent with the rise of the popularity of satellite dishes was watching Turkish TV shows, so I think people have on average gotten better at understanding Turkish

Cerberus

6:25 PM

@CowperKettle Either a coincidence or a borrowed word.

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle Goose Fring, an iconic villain

No luck catching them swans then

Cerberus

@M.A.R. OK so the situation seems similar to that between German and Dutch.

M.A.R.

Swan = قو = Ghoo

Cerberus

Dutch is really a kind of lower German.

CowperKettle

In Dutch, goose is gans

Cerberus

6:26 PM

Thank you.

M.A.R.

@Cerberus Pretty guttural if borrowed

Cerberus

German has many dialects.

NoBillag Nein -Trottoir

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Swiss has lots of guttural sounds.

Even the K in Kreditkarte.

I think.

CowperKettle

There is a nice Russian cartoon from 1950s where a boy travels along with wild geese across Sweden, a fairy tale

M.A.R.

Somehow English looks like the exception

Guttural is the way

Cerberus

@CowperKettle Isn't that a Swedish children's book?

I remember reading a similar story.

The Wonderful Adventures of Nils

The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (orig. Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige; literally Nils Holgersson's wonderful journey across Sweden) is a work of fiction by the Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf, the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in literature. It was originally published in two books, 1906 and 1907, and was first published in English as The Wonderful Adventures of Nils in 1907 and Further Adventures of Nils in 1911. The two parts are usually published together, in English as The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, but that name may also refer to the first part alone. Selma Lagerlöf...

This.

CowperKettle

6:30 PM

Yes