> If you're dead, you don't know you're dead; the pain is only felt by others. The same thing happens if you're stupid.

@M.A.R. LOL

@Robusto thus dead people are stupid. QED

This morning in Yekaterinburg, as I walked to the hosptal 4 km away, to take off my Holter ECG monitor. It was quite cool, at 15°С.

The ad on the tram says Азерчай, [Azerchay]

"chay" is tea, "Azer" is a contraction of "Azerbaijani"

Tea from Azerbaijan

Same as Greek (tea that is). In British English we have the slang word char for tea which is probably related

Tea by sea, Chay by land

reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/9i70u8/tea_by_sea_cha_by_land

@MattE.Эллен Japanese has cha (茶) for tea. Usually rendered as o-cha with the honorific. Thanks to Portuguese traders.

> The earliest of the three [pronunciations, te, cha, and *chai] to enter English is cha, which came in the 1590s via the Portuguese, who traded in Macao and picked up the Cantonese pronunciation of the word

@CowperKettle excellent map

@Robusto clearly why we say "ha cha cha" when it's too hot.

so we started saying "cha" then moved on to "tea", but kept "cha" around just in case

chai tea is the la brea tar pits of drinks

chai:

> "tea," 1908, from the Russian or Arabic word for "tea" (see tea, and compare cha). The 1908 citation is in an Arabic context. Now used especially of spiced teas.

source: Etymonline

When I sit still, my heart rate drops to 38 bpm, sometimes 37. Despite the 6th cup of coffee since sunrise that I'm now drinking.

@CowperKettle That sounds very low. Is it bad?

@FaheemMitha My doctor sent me to the cardiologist, and the cardiologist sent me do to a Holter monitoring and heart ultrasiound and cardiac artery ultrasound

Yes, it's considered not very good.

I feel tired most of the time, but get better when walking or running.

@CowperKettle It'd sound more punny, at least to the Americans, if they reordered it 'Cha if by land tea if by sea'

Dang...can't find it...looking for a graph of connections of Colonial American 'patriots/rebels/terrorists' in the Boston area which showed that Paul Revere was some kind of center of connections among all the revolutionaries

@CowperKettle Is it a heart abnomality or something else?

@FaheemMitha I previously thought it was the side effect of too much running. But it could be some other side effect. Who knows. Could be benign

I googled and found that in rare cases escitalopram causes bradycardia. I'm on escitalopram. Maybe I should switch to a different antidepressant and see what happens.

Because if that's the side effect of the drug, it could be the cause of my constant fatigue.

But those rare cases were all in old persons who did not run.

I'll go to some more doctors and see.

My TSH for some reason plummeted to zero, and I had to decrease L-thyroxine from 100 mcg to 75 mcg.

@CowperKettle Going to doctors is rarely fun. Unlike the Russian variety is considerably better than the Indian variety.

This is also odd, so I should also go and see the endocrinologist.

@CowperKettle You're on anti-depressants? That sounds nasty. Those kinds of drugs have ghastly side-effects.

@FaheemMitha I've never been to an Indian doc, so I can't tell

Doctos prescribe them totally irresponsibly.They're quite dangerous.

@FaheemMitha I had fatigue and elevated cortisol in the summer of 2018, and escitalopram helped a lot.

@CowperKettle Of course. I didn't think you would be able to comment.

Maybe it's the elevated cortisol that's causing my high LDL cholesterol. I will need to retake the test.

@CowperKettle So you didn't take this anti-despressant as an anti-depressant?

Personally, I hate taking drugs. And will probably die before my time because I hate taking them so much.

Will I detest them, I will grant that these chemicals can be quite good at keeping humans alive.

@FaheemMitha I complained of fatigue to my endocrinologist, she made a cortisol test. I had it elevated, she sent me to MRI, made a dexamethasone/cortisol test, and then said "it could be depression". The psychiatrist ran some tests on me, and said I was "one point short of depression, but let's try out an antidepressant and see what happens"

@CowperKettle That's a very casual approach to things. But doctors are like that.

I felt instanly better on the antidepressant, so the psychiatrist said, well, it could be depression if you're better on an antidepressant.

Let's pop some pills and see what happens. We won't be responsible for the results. But we won't forget to charge you.

What is the alternative to this approach?

@CowperKettle So you weren't actually feeling depressed?

@CowperKettle Dunno. I guess be a bit more conservative about taking drugs. Personally I don't take them at all.

@FaheemMitha I was feeling extremely fatigues after each physical exertion. Fatigued for about one-two days to the point of just lying down.

And depressed, I think. Feeling very stressed out.

I did not want to stop physical exercise, so I spent the whole summer in this way. Going for a bicycle ride, then lying down for 2 days.

When it comes to mental stuff, it's very important to stay mentally balanced, I find. Because the human mind is quite delicate, and easily damaged. Stress is particularly bad. Stress can cause all sorts of bad things to happen.

@CowperKettle Depressed about anything in particular, or just generally?

Going for a jog, then lying flat for the rest of the day.

@FaheemMitha Generally

@CowperKettle That certainly does not sound normal.

When your cortisol is consistently high, you feel constantly stressed out and your brain stops working properly.

I was thinking of taking a special drug that lowers cortisol as a side effect. An anti-fungal drug.

But how long did this go on for? Did you think of waiting for it to pass? Could have been a side-effect of some other drug you were taking, or a medical condition.

@CowperKettle That sounds reasonable, as long as it is not dangerous.

In the 1980s, use of this anti-fungal relieved depression in depressive patients with a constant elevation of cortisol.

As you can probably tell, I have a very low opinion of doctors.

@Curio changement is not an English word.

LOL

@FaheemMitha It lasted right until I started on escitalopram. I felt better in just several days, which is very odd, because an SSRI should take at least 2 weeks even to start having an effect on generation of new cells and connections in the brain.

@Curio That wasn't intended as a joke.

I know

How can I replace it?

@CowperKettle Hmm. Placebo effect?

@CowperKettle I assume you had a proper general checkup to see if there was anything going on?

@Curio I'm not sure what the sentence means.

Difficulty (in videogame) will be updated when the player dies

@Curio sounds like a fine sentence

will it get easier or harder?

@FaheemMitha Could have been. But I later tried to go off the drug. And felt worse. And then tried increasing the dose. And felt less depressed. So it could be placebo effect combined with real effect.

the game, I mean

It depends

Both

hmmm

SSRI drugs are not very effective against depression really. There are much stronger antidepressants, but with more side effects.

Some researchers said that SSRIs are just slightly better than placebos.

There's a controversy about treatments in psychiatry.

@Curio "Respawn changes difficulty"

or if it's only the next one: "Next respawn changes difficulty"

Difficulty will change in the next respawn

Is "in" the right preposition?

yes

in or with

Can I just say that @brad is both a very funny man and also a gentleman? english.stackexchange.com/questions/225537/…

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at beginning of answer, potentially bad ns for domain in answer (35): Would a drinking straw, made out of natural straw, be called a 'straw straw'? by DECHEN PACKING on english.SE

A bus stop in Yekaterinburg, showing estimated waiting times based on GPS/GLONASS data from buses

Each bus has a satellite navigation unit and reports its coordinates to the city's network.

I wonder if this is the same in other countries.

It's very handy, especially in the winter, when it's very cold.

You can wait inside some shop, and leave the shop just in time to make the bus.

@CowperKettle we do have real time updates for buses in some places in the UK. I'm not sure if it's down to satellites or some other tracking mechanism

can be a little frustrating: "The XX is 3 mins away" ... 4 minutes later "The XX is 7 mins away"

1 minute later the XX arrives

traffic is annoyingly unpredictable

In Yekaterinburg, we have a website where you can actually see where trams are right now.

map.ettu.ru/api/map/map.php

Red are trams, blue are trolleybuses

And there's a separate website for buses

I love trolleybuses. They are the best. Silent and clean.

I would refit all streets for trolleybuses.

Nice

I wonder if there's one for Oxford

Also the last decade or so there are trolleys available that can run several kilometers on batteries. Very good for instances when there's a circuit break.

bustimes.org

real time bus information for the UK

bustime.ru

Things went pearshaped in Israel

Yekaterinburg rock musician is in a coma with 80% of lungs affected. e1.ru/text/health/2021/08/27/70103546

Brain severely affected.

He's only 5 years older than me.

Just 5 days ago the musician was chatting online.

that sounds terrible.

@CowperKettle While I'm obviously not a medical person, my experience of doctors is that they typically treat their patients like pill receptacles.

They don't have the time, or probably the interest, to get to know the person, his/her circumstances, etc. Which would probably result in better treatment. So they just resort to dosing. While often this is better than nothing, it's still reason for scepticism, specially when it comes to things as dangerous as psychotropic drugs. Anywya, that's my opinion.

@CowperKettle I read that lack of suitable exposure can cause of exacerbate mood disorders, for example. That's just one small aspect.

@CowperKettle Also, there are many different kinds of exercise. Have you tried some others? Assuming that they're an option.

@FaheemMitha The human body is too complex to take into account all aspects. Medical mistakes are inevitable, as is doctors' burnout.

Doctors are overworked, hence burnout, hence mistakes.

> More than one-third of physician assistants (PAs) meet criteria for burnout, suggests a study in the September issue of JAAPA, Journal of the American Academy of PAs (AAPA).

Even assistants are overworked.

@CowperKettle I know that is true. But my experience is that they don't even try.

And that's actually the good aspect. The bad aspect is that they frequently tend to be criminals. At least in India.

I was actually right now sorting through my mother's medical reports when she was dying of breast cancer in 2018. They must have known there was no hope, because they are not idiots, but they did literally hundreds of tests, scans and procedures. A nice tidy profit from the hospital. What do they care for the outcome?

There's so much of it I'm having to remove it from my regular records and put it in a separate storage area. It brings back some very unpleasant memories.

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in link text in answer, potentially bad ns for domain in answer, potentially bad keyword in answer, username similar to website in answer (149): Very unusual meaning of "abortion" by Dnt Home buyer on english.SE

@M.A.R. I think you failed to distribute the middle term in that syllogism.

@Mitch Are they referring to Ivermectin or is there another story behind horse paste?