English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Færd

00:05

@Cerberus That's the US.

There probably would be variations between original countries.

M.A.R.

01:30

@Færd <AAVE> Whoo Fard m'maaan <AAVE> I've been administered both doses of the vaccine

@user21820 ))

Yeah except they add several of them, so it looks like Jabba the Hutt is giving a freaky awkward smile.

@Cerberus Well uh, the inner city but suburban school with the bullies that are rich white kids, two Asian nerds, three American or European nerds, one troublemaker that's not a nerd or a bully, and a whole lotta love triangles. If not stereotypical, then Hollywood-ian is what I meant. Or if that's all of them then I think America has a problem

@Færd I held the ground when you were away, there were too many of them

CowperKettle

02:36

Xanne

03:26

@CowperKettle The New Yorker has an article on Dyatlov and Kuryakov’s investigation and conclusions. So Americans are not the only conspiracy theorists. Do people you know accept K’s conclusions?

Cerberus

04:02

@M.A.R. OK I think this must be a Hollywood trope.

I do not think our schools are like that.

M.A.R.

@Cerberus I would expect European schools to be different. If bullying is half as rampant in American schools as the media (in general) make it out to be, I wouldn't wish it for my worst enemy's kid to go to American schools

Cerberus

@M.A.R. I suspect this trope is not realistic even for America.

I do think the idea of competitiveness does not exist in European schools as much.

At least not here.

M.A.R.

@Xanne Conspiracy theorists of course exist everywhere, and I'd guess backwater third world countries (like mine) have a bigger share of it. Here though, out of fear of saying something stupid, they used to shut up. The new breed of conspiracy theorists is much more vocal and organized (as far as it goes), and American conspiracy theorists sorta lead the way because of how much they take denialism into their hearts

@Cerberus So many conflicting signals that I honestly wouldn't know

My generation is pretty depressed and stressed out though, that's for sure

There are now an awful lot of conspiracy theories floating around in Iranian social media that make absolutely zero sense for Iranians to believe, because they're perpetuated by American right-wing media personalities for propaganda purposes, mostly jabs at leftist politicians

But I guess there's nothing to do but sit back and enjoy the show

M.A.R.

04:52

@M.A.R. *them *to

Færd

05:25

@M.A.R. Hey there buddy! Congrats on the vaccines! You're closer to Russia in Tabriz than we are in Tehran!

How much is the risk that we should require a new series of vaccines for a mutation, I wonder. Terrifying thought.

A mutation, or mutations.

M.A.R.

@Færd Terrifying? Probably not. I mean, we're starting to understand the virus pretty well, and H1N1 viruses mutate every year. The terrifying part of Sars-COV-2 was how little we knew of it

@Færd well it's pretty disorganized here, and they're running around like chicken trying not to screw up vaccinating medical staff and immunocompromised patients, who are very documented individuals and a really small part of the population. I wouldn't wanna imagine what vaccinating a million people will look like.

Færd

05:40

@M.A.R. So the mere fact that we know a lot about the current breed of COVID guarantees that we would be able to produce new vaccines for new mutations at a snap?

@M.A.R. Yeah there won't be a frenzy of vaccinations.

Very slow pace.

M.A.R.

@Færd Not a snap, more like another few dull months of lockdown. But in the beginning, we didn't know if the virus makes you make duck sounds three months in and eats your brain out

Færd

Hmm. That's not nothing, admittedly. I can't say any more tho.

M.A.R.

If life does go back to the new normal, I expect pharmaceutical companies would be more ready than they were at the beginning of the pandemic to make vaccines

Færd

I hope so.

M.A.R.

So more like "the worst is over" but it's pretty far from over

Færd

05:44

So you can roam the city bare-faced now?

I'm jealous.

M.A.R.

Not really, mostly because what business do I have roaming the city

Færd

To show off your bare face.

M.A.R.

And if that post Cowp linked about how cancer patients and transplant patients don't really make antibodies turns out to be true, well

Færd

Ah that would be a problem.

M.A.R.

I don't wanna look like an inconsiderate asshole anyway, and there are enough of them around

Seems to me like Iranians didn't heed pandemic warnings. Not at all.

Færd

05:47

That's almost true.

M.A.R.

And it makes me wanna say bad words.

Færd

I see a lot of people wearing masks when I wander sidewalks and alleys in Tehran.

M.A.R.

Used to be every couple of days you could hear loud music and a huge gathering somewhere in the neighborhood here

Færd

I wouldn't say the majority of them are heedless.

M.A.R.

During peak wave 3 too

Færd

05:48

Those people always stick out from the crowd. It's not like most people do that.

M.A.R.

Not sure that's the case here.

Færd

But I have little idea how careful people are, statistically.

M.A.R.

Every once in a while I do have to get out for a routine blood test or so, and I always see many many maskless folks around.

Færd

Plus, with the recent wave subsiding so quickly, people are less afraid now.

M.A.R.

@Færd Well if those stats Namaki (?) was presenting on television are any true, we suck.

Færd

05:50

@M.A.R. Is it not safe to take them off in the open?

M.A.R.

They said that people have on average only decreased their commuting by 4 %. This was during the crests of the last wave, with curfews and what-not

@Færd I haven't tried it yet

I don't think it's really unsafe for me, because the dosage is low now for immunosuppressive medication

Færd

They're speaking of opening schools and universities from the next term.

I hope you will be able to attend.

M.A.R.

Generally you take fewer pills the more time passes after the transplant. The mechanisms behind this are not understood

Færd

And do you ever stop taking pills?

M.A.R.

P.S. even immunocompromised, I'm young and active (even if overweight)

@Færd No but there's a pretty large difference between 12 pills of Tacrolimus and 3 per day

And prednisolone's (a potent corticosteroid) used to be 50 milligrams a day, now it's 5

Færd

05:55

Huh. That I've heard has serious side effects.

M.A.R.

It does

Immunosuppressive medication is essentially controlled toxin.

Fungi kill you with it, but we add a couple of functional groups and decrease the potency and concentration, and voila.

Færd

There was this stupid doctor who prescribed a daily does of that indeterminately for my allergic reactions.

I took it for a year until I found out how reckless that was.

M.A.R.

Corticosteroids look like hormones that help you retain sugar and salt. Nothing good can come from that

Færd

Hmm

M.A.R.

I'm of course oversimplifying it, but they exacerbate osteoporosis, cause weight gain, some hair loss

Impede wound healing

Make the skin patchy and dry. My nose bleeds a lot

Færd

05:58

Have you noticed any of that in your body yet?

M.A.R.

Retain potassium

Færd

I'm sorry that you have to go through this.

M.A.R.

@Færd The weight gain for sure, haha. Some hairloss, although unsure if genetic factors aren't playing a role here. I consume lots of dairy products, I doubt my bones would go weak

@Færd Meh

It all looks bad when you talk about it.

But thankfully it's no longer a big part of my life. Life resumes normally.

I even struggle not to forget taking the pills

Færd

Dairy products are not so essential to osteoporosis, I suppose?

And no guaranteed safeguard against it.

M.A.R.

@Færd Well the hormone would try to keep depleting the bones of minerals, but if you replace the minerals at a fast enough rate, there shouldn't be much problem

Færd

06:02

Yeah but shouldn't your body be able to absorb the minerals in the first place? And if it's good enough at that, I don't think you'd need daily loads of dairy.

M.A.R.

Not as simple as that

Færd

Probably. I'm not the doctor here.

M.A.R.

Calcium balance is one of the most complicated things in the body

Hah well neither am I

But I can't even count how many things tip the calcium balance one way or another

Færd

You're more of a doctor than I am anyway.

M.A.R.

With a vitamin like B12, or even vitamin D, it's simpler, if you absorb more, it's gonna pile up

Calcium is 'stuck' in a dozen places. Bound to plasma proteins, the bones are the biggest calcium deposits in the body, certain tissues store it, like the muscles

And a dozen hormones regulate calcium being deposited in these sites or being released into the bloodstream (which is gonna do its job then be excreted, more likely)

Færd

06:06

The 'only' thing that have turned out off in my overall check-ups so far has been a slight calcium deficiency.

M.A.R.

The dozen that I know from the half a hundred that scientists know from all the hormones in the body, which are estimated to be at least ten times the number of hormones already known

@Færd It's one of the easier minerals to decrease and increase, there shouldn't be any cause for worry, but I don't know the specifics of your case obviously

ConGovDeIn

@CowperKettle Hi, how are you? (Please don’t take me in “bad faith” or “snarky”, I really can do almost nothing to make you believe that I’m in good faith except just to say it).

M.A.R.

I mean, compare it with potassium. If your blood potassium is high, there almost definitely IS a cause for worry

Færd

I take a couple pills of vitamin D+ every week. That should be enough.

And I walk a lot.

Have been trying to learn to dance, to keep active.

M.A.R.

@Færd Couple? Every week? 50000 IU soft gels?

Færd

06:10

Let me read the description on the case.

ConGovDeIn

Is Russia (former USSR) a Communist country? I’m beginner in reading and understanding the communist ideas, so if Russia is a Communist country does it mean that there are no coal miners or uranium miners (or any other thing which the Mother Earth holds inside her) in Russia? Or does it mean that there are miners, labourers and others of same sort but the bourgeois have this dread of revolution? The deterrence is there, does that make it Communist?

Færd

@M.A.R. 2000 mg of calcium carbonate per pill.

So, far less.

@ConGovDeIn What is communism?

M.A.R.

@Færd Oh, that sounds pretty safe

ConGovDeIn

@Færd Absence of private property, everything belongs to community.

M.A.R.

@Færd anything that the American right-wing hates

Including, but not limited to, vegetables.

Færd

06:13

@ConGovDeIn You've heard of Russian oligarchs then, I suppose.

@M.A.R. Vegetables are so communist.

ConGovDeIn

@Færd Sorry :-) I didn’t hear about it.

M.A.R.

@Færd AOC wants every American to turn gay by eating vegetables

ConGovDeIn

But got it by a search

Færd

@ConGovDeIn Yeah. Basically, there are no real communist states.

Russia today doesn't even come close.

ConGovDeIn

Did a Communist state ever exist? Even for a little while, but did it exist?

Færd

06:17

@M.A.R. Vegetables and babies.

M.A.R.

@ConGovDeIn What I've been told (meaning, I'm just echoing what I've read, I haven't processed it any) is that to achieve this communist dream, Lenin et al. first instituted a state capitalist system, believing that capitalist policies will eventually inevitably be directed towards socialism and communism. But then European labor riots were crushed by those governments, and Russia ended up holding the bag

So then the only way forward was beating people into submission and starving them.

Færd

@ConGovDeIn We'd have to finetune our definitions and dig in.

Which shall be a project for another day.

M.A.R.

I'm supposed to be studying mycology

Færd

See you later.

Færd

06:31

@ConGovDeIn I think I was a bit too terse. So, there were states who were called communist. The USSR was one. China today is one. The former imploded about 30 years ago. The latter is more capitalist than some European social democracies.

But these are all labels. One would need to make a bit more effort to understand history.

ConGovDeIn

06:47

Okay.

Yashas

@user21820 The source of contribution had two lines dedicated to it prior to the line I shared here. So I thought it would be better to omit the source to reduce bloat.

"Experimental methods used to determine stability at throughputs required to scan the protein sequence space thoroughly are laborious."

"at throughputs" or "at throughput" or "at the throughput"

Context is that the space of proteins is too big and experimentally determining the stability of each one of them is painfully laborious. By "throughput", I mean the rate at which you explore the protein space. It needs to be high to be useful. No point in a method that takes 100 years to develop a drug.

CowperKettle

I thought that Sweden was more equitable.

I thought that wealth there was more regularly spread.

Yashas

The non-rich with large cash reserves/savings are about to lose even more from inflation.

Investing in stocks will ensure the value doesn't depreciate due to inflation related reasons. If inflation shoots up, the value of stocks will remain same and should in principle numerically rise.

I think these nice looking plots don't incorporate these hidden ways to lose money.

Færd

07:07

@CowperKettle That's not a wealth distribution diagram tho.

Xanne

07:30

Itks not an income distribution diagram either.

It’s

And the people who have savings for retirement invested in stocks have also seen the value of their savings go up. It’s mostly a stock market effect.

CowperKettle

@RobertHarvey Here "not in Britain" is called "there". — DJClayworth 15 hours ago

Another day of extreme heat

The usual temp for May is 10 to 20 degrees.

CowperKettle

07:56

A drunken man killed three random passers-by in a park near the Yekaterinburg train station e1.ru/text/incidents/2021/05/17/69918311

The police shot him in the legs and arrested him.

I was jogging nearby several times. Funny to think that you might go for a jog and never get back.

user21820

@Yashas Sometimes it is fine. In my opinion it is not idiomatic English to drop the "of A" in the phrase "the contribution of A to ...". You are free to cut out words at the expense of clarity.

CowperKettle

Word of the day: electrowinning

user21820

@Yashas "At throughputs" and "at the throughput" are both fine. "at throughput" is simply ungrammatical here. However, the sentence itself is unwieldy. Better is "At throughput levels required to scan the protein sequence space thoroughly, experimental methods used to determine stability are laborious.".

CowperKettle

10:03

Yashas

10:25

Is it wrong to use "difference between" to refer to the numerical difference in two values?

"difference between 10 and 20" or "difference in 10 and 20"

If it's not wrong, is there any heuristic to decide what to use when?

Matt E. Эллен

"The difference in 10 and 20" is wrong. The preposition usually co-located with difference, when contrasting two (or more) things is between. In is used with difference when locating the difference, e.g. "making a difference in education", "... the difference in the west".

Yashas

what if I had variables instead? "difference in X and Y is 20"

"The thermodynamic stability of a protein can thus be quantified by the difference in the Gibbs free energy between the unfolded and folded state"

Matt E. Эллен

@Yashas no, it would still be between

@Yashas yes, that is correct

Yashas

Oh I clearly see now. "difference in the Gibbs free energy" is locating where the difference is, i.e., Gibbs free energy.

Matt E. Эллен

yes :)

Yashas

10:41

should there be a "the" before "Gibbs free energy"? There is only one definition for Gibbs free energy but the "the" sounds a bit weird to me while speaking.

Matt E. Эллен

the is optional there. It makes sense with or without. I would look to the style guide recommended by the institution you are writing for to know what to do. If it were up to me I would leave it in because "Gibbs free energy" is a definite thing in the sentence, but I don't know if there's a grammatical rule about it.

Yashas

I think the reason it sounds weird to me is because there are two "the"s in quick succession: "the difference in the".

I am not sure what happened to me in the last 5minutes but it no longer sounds wierd.

user21820

@Yashas Why should multiple definite articles sound weird? Almost every natural language has definite articles and nothing weird with having lots of them in a single sentence.

If there is any reason it sounds weird, it is because "Gibbs" here is functioning as an adjective.

Matt E. Эллен

@Yashas language is weird like that sometimes!

CowperKettle

12:04

M.A.R.

12:37

@CowperKettle I don't g . . . controls anger

@user21820 I got dibs on Gibbs

Mitch

Has any body noticed a very very subtle change in the colors on SE? For example:

The color of the red 'inbox number unread' and green 'recent credit earned' in the upper right - they both seem to have become slightly muted in the past week.

Has anybody else noticed that? Or should I see a doctor about it? I haven't noticed change in other colors in ELU or outside. But context matters with color interpretation so I'm checking.

OK maybe the foreground color of text on main is slightly lighter than before? On chat I haven't noticed the change.

Matt E. Эллен

12:53

The font has changed

maybe it's related to that

153

Q: We are switching to system fonts on May 10, 2021

Update 2 - Alright folks, got some follow-up for you. You can see I’m considering some changes over at the Stacks repo. Sidenote: did you know our front-end library is open source and y’all can see what we’re up to? macOS and iOS continue to get San Francisco Windows continues to get Segoe, but ...

doesn't appear to be anything related to colour in there

> generally small (~100kb)

I hate the fact that 100kb is considered small

"generally small (~100kb) font file" - That's not small, at all. And it adds another web request that's executed strictly in sequence, after the HTML has loaded and parsed, and after the CSS the HTML references has loaded and parsed. Plus, another point of failure. The web today as a whole feels as responsive as MySpace in its day. To fix that we need to convince designers to stop having an opinion on what's small or what's fast. — Tim May 11 at 8:04

yeah, what he said

CowperKettle

13:20

Highway to Tuymen closed due to forest fires

Mitch

@MattE.Эллен OK....but:

> Will my Stack Exchange site lose its custom font?. Nope! This change will not affect sites that have their own typefaces. Sites like Christianity and English will still be displayed in their custom fonts.

Matt E. Эллен

yes. English still has its own serif font, but the sans font is now system-ui,-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,"Segoe UI","Ubuntu","Roboto","Noto Sans","Droid Sans",sans-serif

Although when the post said "custom font" I expected SE to have had their own font made, but it's just Georgia,Cambria,"Times New Roman",Times,serif

If a whole load of new species were found in the north west of England, that might be called the Cumbrian explosion!

CowperKettle

@M.A.R. You don't get it? ))

Mitch

13:43

@CowperKettle He eventually got it.

Mitch

14:51

@MattE.Эллен OK. At least part of the workd makes some little extra sense now.

@MattE.Эллен And if they were found in a Mexican dance club it'd be a Cumbian explosion

And if they were found in a mid-size Toyata, it's be a Camryan explosion

Matt E. Эллен

I didn't know Cambria is Wales until just now

Mitch

Pretty understandable.

It's not like people go around saying "Cambria is Wales! Cambria is Wales!" for you to find out, because that'd be pretty crazy.

And if you ate too many of these species while wearing a formal tuxedo, you might have a Cummerbundian explosion.

Matt E. Эллен

You learn about the Cambria Explosion in history class, but they never tell you what Cambria is. I lived an hours drive from Wales when I was at school, never told me nuthin. And now I find out because I'm making a joke about Cumbria, which comes from the same root as Cambria. So is it really a joke at all?

Was I the joke all along?

Mitch

If you're in a room of people and for each one you can judge that they're not a joke, then you have to realize that you're the joke.

Matt E. Эллен

D:

CowperKettle

15:00

How to Avoid Israeli Brutality

►

@MattE.Эллен I live near the city of Perm, after which some geological epoch was named too

Mitch

If all these species were found in a central African country, it'd be a Cameroonian explosion

CowperKettle

Permian

The Permian ( PUR-mee-ən) is a geologic period and stratigraphic system which spans 47 million years from the end of the Carboniferous period 298.9 million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Triassic period 251.902 Mya. It is the last period of the Paleozoic era; the following Triassic period belongs to the Mesozoic era. The concept of the Permian was introduced in 1841 by geologist Sir Roderick Murchison, who named it after the region of Perm in Russia.The Permian witnessed the diversification of the two groups of amniotes, the synapsids and the sauropsids (reptiles). The world at the time...

Mitch

I will not stop

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch keep going!

@CowperKettle have you looked for fossils there?

Mitch

@MattE.Эллен At the end of the Permian and beginning of the Triassic there was a huge die-off in species. This is often referred to as the Permian mass extinction.

If all species everywhere had died, we might call it a Permanent mass exitinction.

Matt E. Эллен

15:05

but we wouldn't

CowperKettle

@MattE.Эллен No, I haven't visited Perm yet, it's a bit to the west of Yekaterinburg

Matt E. Эллен

because of the permanent mass extinction

Mitch

But it was limited to the west coast of South America we might call it a Peruvian mass extinction

CowperKettle

I passed through the Perm Oblast several times on a train though. Does not look geologically distinct, looking from a train couch.

The saying goes that citizens of Perm have salted ears.

Permyak Salty Ears

Permyak Salty Ears (Russian: Пермяк солёные уши) is a 2006 urban sculpture by Rustam Ismagilov in the city of Perm, Russia. The sculpture consists of two parts - the figure of the photographer and a round frame with large ears, in which those who wish to pose for a photograph can put their faces. This is similar to a photo stand-in. The sculpture is located on the main street of the city of Perm, Komsomol Prospect, near the "Ural" hotel and is located on the "Perm Green Line" - a pedestrian route for tourists. The monument was unveiled on April 1, 2006. == Background == A "Permyak" is a resident...

Mitch

@CowperKettle That's a very specific thing to say.

CowperKettle

15:06

> "Permyak salty ears" is the traditional nickname for the inhabitants of Perm and the surrounding countryside. The region was well known for salt production and according to legend, the nickname was given to workers who used to carry bags of salt on their shoulders and whose ears became saturated with salt, causing them to increase in size and turn red

Suck on my Permyak Salty Ears

Mitch

And if the die-off of so many species occurred in a child's diaper, we might call it a Pamper mass extinction

Matt E. Эллен

15:27

@Mitch If it happened in Ian's hair after he'd made it permanently curly, it would be Ian's perm's mass extinction

@Mitch if all the species were found singing around a camp fire, it would be the Kumbaya explosion

Mitch

@MattE.Эллен And if he was from India, it might be Prem's perm's mass extinction

CowperKettle

17:40

> I am heavy and hard to pick up, but backwards I am not. What am I?

Xanne

18:57

@CowperKettle Dog?

Xanne

19:45

Anyway, @CowperKettle, I really was curious about whether the recent investigation of the Dyatlov event was satisfying to the people in the area, or dismissed as another coverup. I would assume you’ve seen the moutain where it happened.

CowperKettle

@Xanne No, I haven't seen the mountain. There have been a million theories that I've heard since my school years )))

And a million discussions online.

I think it must have been something quite prosaic. People love to blow things out of proportion and invent theories.

It was cold, windy and dark. You can get dead quickly.

A bicyclist several years ago fell into a puddle in cold weather, and had some fingers amputated. Strong cold wind froze away his fingers, because there was nothing to cover them with. And that was in a much milder situation than on this remote mountain pass.

The bicyclist even posted photos of his hand after amputation of fingers, as a warning to others.

CowperKettle

20:16

Increased face detection responses on the mooney faces test in people at clinical high risk for psychosis

People close to psychosis are more likely to see human faces in blotches of paint.

M.A.R.

21:41

@Mitch I think they'd changed long ago. You just haven't been paying attention

Mitch

23:35

@M.A.R. thanks

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…