English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

tchrist

00:02

@CowperKettle This keeps happening. Go figger.

That's hardly the first such story. Not especially surprising, just tragic stupidity.

Cerberus

00:17

> Mr. DeSantis and public health experts expected a rise in cases this summer as people gathered indoors in the air-conditioning.

This is interesting.

Does Florida also have a rise in influenza cases every summer?

Xanne

01:53

@Cerberus No, Florida shows flu declines in weeks 15-31 on a three-year average and very low all year this year. floridahealth.gov/diseases-and-conditions/influenza/index.html

Cerberus

@Xanne Hmm then why would they expect a rise in summer because of air-conditioning?

For that should also have affected influenza.

Xanne

Week 31 is the most recent week, ending Aug. 21, I think.

I think he’s talking Covid, not flu.

Influenza cases are way down since Covid restrictions and cautions have been put in place.

Week 32, not 31.

Cerberus

Shouldn't the same thing, in general, apply to corona and influenza?

Shouldn't both spread more rapidly when people "gather indoors"?

I have heard this said of both viruses.

Xanne

02:51

Each virus is different.

Respiratory viruses can be transmitted via four major modes of transmission: direct (physical) contact, indirect contact (fomite), (large) droplets and (fine) aerosols. We know little about the relative contribution of each mode to the transmission of a particular virus in different settings, and how its variation affects transmissibility and transmission dynamics. Discussion on the particle size threshold between droplets and aerosols and the importance of aerosol transmission for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and influenza virus is ongoing.

nature.com/articles/s41579-021-00535-6

So I’ve learned how to enter longer messages but not how to indent to indicate that something is quoted. My apologies.

Also note that there are varieties of influenza as well as a few other corona viruses, some of which cause common colds.

tchrist

03:20

As opposed to this one, which causes uncommon colds. :(

Xanne

03:58

Yes.

Vroom Commercial | Dealership Deceit

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“It look like you done picked the wrong website, chief.” You done = you have?

You did write a book; you done write a book.

You have picked; you done picked. You done wrote a book, then.

Xanne

04:19

@Mitch Ferguson is contending that historians emphasize hierarchies versus networks that aren’t hierarchical, partly because the hierarchical data are more readily available. A good point, if hard to prove.

CowperKettle

04:51

smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/…

CowperKettle

06:12

I took a bus today and counted the riders. There were 25 persons besides me, and only 6 of them wore face masks.

Of the six that wore face masks, two only wore them over the mouth.

One guy who did not have a mask was coughing through the ride.

Xanne

07:24

i count rather casually, people on buses. Usually 50 or a hundred places, three or four people, unless it’s raining. Energy used per person?

The locals think that if there’s too much traffic on a road, the idea is to put the road on a diet; make the road smaller. These city planners are then surprised at the complaints from people a block over, where the traffic has diverted itself. Meanwhile these brainiacs go back to their day jobs, where they write apps for cell phones.

Barack Obama and Michelle had a birthday party on Martha’s Voneyard with hundreds of people dancing to music and not a mask in sight! So Tennessee and Martha’s Vineyard are pretty much on the same wave length.

A woman in Florida died of myocardial somrthing-or-other a few hours after a Pfizer mRNA shot. That should sweep the net in short order, complete with shots of needle injections.

CowperKettle

07:45

@Xanne If I were an authority, I would ban private cars from cities and towns.

Built-up areas are not made for private cars. People should travel on electric trams, electric buses, trolleybuses, and using bicycles and electric scooters.

I would set up free bicycle storage stations, where you could park your bicycle and not be afraid of it getting stolen.

That would allow people to take shopping trips on bicycles over larger areas.

And since the road traffic will be reduced by over 50% due to the banning of private cars, I would create a lot of new tramway networks.

With the technologies we have today it's easy to organize a well-functioning public transport system. Every person now has a smartphone, and GPS information on every tram and every bus is already available.

And it will be so much quieter in the streets, which will really spur the use of bicycles.

Xanne

@CowperKettle I used to do my grocery shopping on a bike. It was a lot of trips if I happened to be having guests.

And of course by any measure, it’s hella dangerous.

What do people want? Privacy, flexibility, their own music, room to transport stuff as well as friends and family.

Average auto/truck is getting larger, not smaller. SUV needs three rows in the back for the kids being taken to ballet and soccer practice.

CowperKettle

08:02

@Xanne It it expensive to do grocery shopping online? I tried it last year, and for a working city dweller it turned out to be okay. They carry a lot of products right to your flat.

And online shopping saves so much time. You could just push the "Repeat" button and re-order the same order.

Because one usually buys the same stuff again and again. On the website, it's saved in history.

With a good public transport system, kids can go to the soccer stadium themselves.

Xanne

Definitely it works sometimes and for some things. Other values overall prevail. I like to select my own avacados. other produce, meat, cheese, cat food, bread.

CowperKettle

08:32

I'm totally cool with someone's selecting. Even the dairy. I ditched cheese for now due to the high cholesterol.

I think that ecology should take precendence over convenience. Thus personal cars should be banned in cities. The task is to save the earth and its resources.

CowperKettle

08:51

Unless conservation efforts are improved, so many mammal species will die out during the next 50 years that nature will need 3-5 million years to recover, a recent study found

CowperKettle

09:13

I started on 30 g of walnuts/day.

I've no idea what "cup" means.

S.M.T

@CowperKettle Probably like 1/2 of 60 ml cup

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle IKR! Counting calories was a hassle for me for this very reason.

Everyone wrote about servings and cups and what-not, nobody used a reference

I blame Imperial units

Mitch

12:25

@Xanne That sounds reminiscent of the "great men" vs "social trends" explanations of history - none of them are wrong exactly but none of them are totally correct, they are just ways of looking at things..

Re Paul Revere, I had thought the point of the 'center man in the network' idea, beyond being able to use math for historical purposes, was that in the US school system, the story is always Paul Revere over and over again, when supposedly he happened to be one of two or three that did such a midnight warning ride, and it was by chance that Longfellow used his name as the center of his poem. When in reality Revere was supposed to have been a minor character among all the players...

... but then this network analysis showed that Rever was at the center of it all literally.

That is, the meta story is that your childhood truth was dismantled by closer attention to details, but then that was reversed by math.

The meta meta story is that each story has its entertainment values, but then the reversals in telling of the story is also entertaining.

The meta meta meta story is that I may be totally wrong in presenting this multiple reversal story and maybe I'm making this all up. But I don't think so. Or is that a meta^4 story?

Also history is just a story. That's meta^meta.

I could go on all day

CowperKettle

13:17

Terminator Vs Jesus The Greatest Action Story Ever Told!

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CowperKettle

13:43

> Security Service of Ukraine exposed a large Russia-financed "bot farm" based in Kyiv. More than 15,000 anonymous accounts were employed to spread misinformation, posting on behalf of "ordinary citizens" on Facebook, Instagram, and Tik-Tok.

In Russia we call them 15-ruble bots.

There was a preposterous hearsay that they receive 15 rubles per post.

Faheem Mitha

15:17

@CowperKettle That one is actually kind of funny. I've not seen this before.

Cerberus

15:30

> The Independent mentions concerns that the fighters in Panjshir are likely to be outmatched as Taliban fighters have captured or acquired western-made military weapons and equipment with artillery and aircraft during the offensive.

CowperKettle

15:56

> Influenza vaccination reduces the risk of all-cause death, myocardial infarction, or stent thrombosis at 12 months in hospitalized patients with myocardial infarction or high-risk coronary disease

This is cool.

medicalxpress.com/news/2021-08-flu-jab-heart-standard.html

I remember there also was a study that showed a decrease of Alzheimer's incidence in flu vaccinated patients.

I wonder if that has been replicated or corroborated.

Cerberus

@CowperKettle Reduces by how much, one wonders.

CowperKettle

Cardio-related deaths decreased by 41%

[HR] Hazard Ratio 0.59 = a decrease of 41%

All-cause deaths, by 28%

Cerberus

That's pretty good.

I really, really wonder why they don't even mention the percentages in cases where the effect is great.

It's so stupid.

Cerberus

16:24

By the way, what they Americans did do for Afghanistan is let most people live in relative freedom and allow the country to become more developed in many ways, for the past twenty years. So there is that. It remains to be seen how much of that will be lost over the next couple of years.

CowperKettle

16:36

@Cerberus The US should have invaded a second Afghanistan-sized country as a control group.

That would have really told us how a 20-year control affects a country.

Cerberus

@CowperKettle Perhaps Britain?

Or is that too small?

CowperKettle

LOL

CowperKettle

19:20

Struggling to learn a new language? Blame it on your stable brain