English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

12:50 AM

> The most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. —Mark Twain

3:32 AM

@Robusto @Mitch In Haitink's obituary of today, they did mention his sometimes impatient wrath, but nothing remotely scandalous was written.

I happen to know he had some other problems, but I am glad they were not mentioned, no matter how deserving this might have been.

No need to kick him when he's down.

It is a long obituary.

Cerberus

4:01 AM

Meisterkurs Dirigieren | Bernard Haitink | Lucerne Festival at Easter | Brahms, Tragische Ouvertüre

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He was still teaching at 84 (he died at 92, directed his last piece at 90).

CowperKettle

4:56 AM

> Alec Baldwin fires prop gun on set of movie, killing a crew member and injuring director

@Cerberus Nice music

Brahms: Tragische Ouvertüre - Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra [HD]

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Tragic Overture (Brahms)

The Tragic Overture (German: Tragische Ouvertüre), Op. 81, is a concert overture for orchestra written by Johannes Brahms during the summer of 1880. It premiered, under Hans Richter, on 26 December 1880 in Vienna. Eight days later, it was repeated at the University of Breslau on a program with the premiere of the Academic Festival Overture. Most performances last between twelve and fifteen minutes. Brahms chose the title "tragic" to emphasize the turbulent, tormented character of the piece, in essence a free-standing symphonic movement, in contrast to the mirthful ebullience of a companion piece...

First big snowfall overnight

Xanne

5:14 AM

@CowperKettle Beautiful photos. I am wondering how Russia’s regions (oblasts?) will implement Putin’s orders for a paid week off. There must be exceptions for the usual essential workers and industries.

CowperKettle

@Xanne The majority will just continue working, this or that way.

Nobody knows how to implement these "orders", so the practice differs widely.

And wildly.

Depending on the region.

Putin did not provide any compensation from the budget, so all businesses are very much mad, and will do anything to evade any restrictions. Using any loopholes and bribes.

CowperKettle

5:33 AM

I have a friend who is a massage therapist. She worked right through the first "lockdown", inviting clients over to her hired flat.

Because she has exactly zero (0.00) rubles stored up. To stay alive and to pay for the flat, she must work.

The majority of Russians live hand-to-mouth.

Only in big cities there is some semblance of middle class.

CowperKettle

7:06 AM

Turns out you can actually die of a blank shot

Jon-Erik Hexum

Jon-Erik Hexum (; November 5, 1957 – October 18, 1984) was an American actor and model, known for his lead roles in the TV series Voyagers! and Cover Up, and his supporting role as Pat Trammell in the biopic The Bear. He died by an accidental self-inflicted blank cartridge gunshot to the head on the set of Cover Up. == Life and career == Hexum was born in Englewood, New Jersey, in 1957 to Gretha and Thorleif Hexum, who were of Norwegian descent. He and his elder brother, Gunnar, were raised in Tenafly, New Jersey, by their mother after their parents divorced when Hexum was four. After graduating...

CowperKettle

9:12 AM

In Kentucky, it's illegal for a person to walk down the street with an ice cream cone in their back pocket.

Xanne

9:24 AM

Now why would they make a law like that? Trying to lure the children?

Matt E. Эллен

11:21 AM

Maybe Al Capone was well known for carrying icecream cones in his back pocket, so they introduced the law to try and catch him, but he always had an alibi.

and now they keep it around because fines from the law are all that are propping up the police pension fund

CowperKettle

12:23 PM

Vaccination rate increases sharply. Good.

300 000 persons per day

It hang at 120 000 persons/day for months

Mitch

@Cerberus I had vaguely heard of Haitink as a conductor but absolutely nothing beyond that. Wikipedia gives no indication of any kind of scandal at all. What happened?

@MattE.Эллен Well deduced mon seigneur, well deduced. But you inadvertently omit one crucial detail. At the time of Capone's infamy, Kentucky was a commonwealth and not a state, and it is well known that commonwealths are syndico-anarchalist states with no written, oral, or otherwise memorable constitution, making the concept of 'law' a only living in the delirium of that toothless meth head begging at the corner of State and Dearborn.

No, the other corner.

No, the meth head with the orange knitted cap.

No, the one on the left.

Yeah that guy.

Matt E. Эллен

Meth heads imagine laws?

no wonder they're so messed up

Mitch

You'd be surprised

Matt E. Эллен

I look forward to it

Mitch

I'm surprised, and I'm the one making all this shit up.

Matt E. Эллен

12:35 PM

:D

Robusto

12:59 PM

@Cerberus My only beef with him was I found a few of his interpretations rather tame.

Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique and Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps come to mind. His first movement of the Berlioz was fine, however. And I liked his Petrouchka

CowperKettle

Robusto

Birches?

CowperKettle

Yes. The snow has already thawed off. It was in the morning.

Robusto

Nice.

@CowperKettle The NY Times says Russia has sharply strengthened its internet censorship recently.

> Russia’s boldest moves to censor the internet began in the most mundane of ways — with a series of bureaucratic emails and forms.

> The messages, sent by Russia’s powerful internet regulator, demanded technical details — like traffic numbers, equipment specifications and connection speeds — from companies that provide internet and telecommunications services across the country. Then the black boxes arrived.

> The telecom companies had no choice but to step aside as government-approved technicians installed the equipment alongside their own computer systems and servers. Sometimes caged b…

CowperKettle

1:29 PM

@Robusto Yes, every Friday some new media is being announced to belong to "Foreign Agents", and this imposes a severe toll on these internet media

And the so-called Chinese Firewall has allegedly been installed already, and is ready for being used in an emergency.

Say, in case there are demonstrations in the streets.

Robusto

@CowperKettle Of course. The genuine emergencies don't matter to them. It's the ones that threaten the dictator's power.

@CowperKettle Yes, I remember when that happened. He fired a .44 magnum revolver, loaded with a blank, at his head as a joke. The joke was on him. It just goes to show that ignorance can kill you.

CowperKettle

3:14 PM

Here we provide evidence that the Vikings were present in Newfoundland in AD 1021. We overcome the imprecision of previous age estimates by making use of the cosmic-ray-induced upsurge in atmospheric radiocarbon concentrations in AD 993

SmokeDetector

4:01 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected, potentially bad keyword in answer, toxic answer detected (158): Non-gendered collective title for a group of people in a business context by Youssef on english.SE

CowperKettle

4:15 PM

My cholesterol and LDL are still high.

Looks like the doctor will prescribe a statin to me.

I hoped that a 2-month diet will lower the levels.

Cholesterol is 6.5, and the doc said it should be well below 5 mmol/l

My BMI is normal, and I've run 1500 km since January 1st.

Robusto

@CowperKettle That is definitely high. What did your diet consist of?

CowperKettle

@Robusto Bread, bread, lots of black bread. Buckwheat kasha, millet porrige, milk + cacao. Vegetable salads. Cottage cheese and meat.

I've been avoiding cheese totally since spring.

And fat dairy.

Used lowfat milk and 0% cottage cheese.

The doctor said the diet only determines about 25% of one's cholesterol levels.

The rest is genes.

Robusto

Yeah.

CowperKettle

Who knows. I haven't been reading up much about this.

Robusto

Before I had my knee replacement I took a statin, but discontinued it once I was able to exercise again.

My total cholesterol got down to 108 mg/dL, now it's about 151.

The HDL portion is the important component, though.

CowperKettle

4:26 PM

Maybe it's because my cortisol is sometimes elevated

Cortisol can affect cholesterol

Robusto

I don't know.

CowperKettle

I'm just musing ))

Cortisol is very pesky to measure. I hope scientists invent an implantable sensor

Robusto

I eat oatmeal practically every morning.

CowperKettle

I love buckwheat kasha

It's the best meal.

It's healthy and tasty.

Robusto

I read that many cardiologists of any age take a statin. Because why not?

CowperKettle

4:28 PM

My sister used to lug a whole suitcase of casha groats with her to India. Because they only use buckwheat there to feed animals.

I wonder if buckwheat is available in US stores.

Robusto

Sure.

Jan 16 at 22:08, by Robusto

You know, since I started eating my current oatmeal breakfast, I've lost the taste for all my previous favorites. Toast, eggs, fried potatoes—none of these hold any allure for me now. I needs me oats.

CowperKettle

There have sprung up a lot of healthy food stores in Yekaterinburg, but they are a bit expensive.

I loved fried potatoes as a kid in the USSR

And all kinds of potatoes.

Девчата Блюда из картошки

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The 1960s Forrest Gump "Bubba-on-shrimp" moment in a popular Soviet movie

The girl gives a long, long list of potato dishes

Блюда из картошки means Dishes from potatoes

Robusto

@CowperKettle It's also good to eat foods high in Omega-3 fatty acids. Fish like salmon are particularly good.

M.A.R.

4:57 PM

Hey folks how's it hanging

@CowperKettle my cholesterol has also been constantly high whether the overall lipid profile is good or bad.

I attributed some of it to vit D insufficiency, now, I dunno.

I exercise my ass off, and TG ends up at 44, but cholesterol would still be at 190.

FBS is also a bit high but I can safely blame the corticosteroid for that. So I dunno, maybe it's a transplant patient thing?

Oh BTW the creatinine levels went back down again \o/

And for some reason I'm enjoying the courses in this semester way more.

So generally, life is good. LG

Back in the day I wanted an LG phone but Samsung explosively took off. One day . . .

@Robusto oh they can have pretty nasty side effects. But yeah, some can be really good prophylactic drugs.

Mitch

@Robusto I thought the same about stents. Why not just put a couple in just for preventions sake?

But it turns out that they did a study and they found that there's no benefit to having a stent if you don't already have chest pain.

But I think the side effects of statins are rare enough that it really is a 'why not' situation.

M.A.R.

Simvastatin passes the BBB (blood--brain barrier) a bit so it's a great prophylactic drug for strokes. It also messes up with some cytochrome enzymes in the liver, so for example people that take other drugs should be really careful

Mitch

@M.A.R. Wait..what?

@M.A.R. Oh. I heard that there are some cases of ... severe muscle cramps? something like that.

M.A.R.

@Mitch well the point is the side effects are rare but if many people start taking them they won't be as rare. If, for example, you feel myalgia you should immediately discontinue statins.

@Mitch well most of the time when skeletal muscles hurt it's pretty innocuous, but not in the case of statins

My internet is acting up again. Way to ruin the mood, internet

@Mitch the ones that can cross BBB can have CNS effects. Statins in general can have gastrointestinal effects like most drugs. I mean, when you study them, you see that the mindset was not making prophylactic drugs, but finding agents to treat hyperlipidemia/ hypercholesterolemia

Mitch

5:20 PM

@M.A.R. What kind of immediate CNS affects does it have? I wouldn't think it would be useful in a stroke because I thought all the effects of statins are long term.

M.A.R.

@Mitch well that's what prophylaxis is, no? Take a few every week so in fifteen years you won't have a stroke

As for what to be on the lookout in the short term, usually the huge range of drugs that enter CNS that aren't supposed to be there cause confusion and some memory loss, rarely anything irreversible, but still pretty unfun nonetheless

If I recall correctly though, the two mildest statins are the only ones lipophillic enough to cross BBB, simvastatin and lovastatin

Atorvastatin is the most common statin prescribed here and it doesn't cross CNS

Mitch

Oh... by "it's a great prophylactic drug for strokes" you meant that long term use is good for preventing or ameliorating the effects of strokes?

M.A.R.

The whole rhabdomyolysis thing happens with all of them though

Mitch

not "Oh if we shoot up this guy with simvastatin right now after his stroke, he'll do better"

@M.A.R. Oh Rhabdo

M.A.R.

@Mitch preventing (by preventing buildup of plaques like the ones in atherosclerosis) and IIRC simvastatin raised HDL a bit

@Mitch yeah muscle pain and if ignored, can do some real damage to kidneys

Also one of them had a bit of an anticoagulant effect though I don't remember which, which is also great for atherosclerosis

Because in atherosclerosis the vascular wall cells are damaged and some inflammation occurs, which might activate platelets, leading to thrombosis

(Which is how myocardial infarctions occur)

Omega-3 is much better for prophylaxis, although 1) it can raise TG a bit, especially initially, so moderately good for lowering LDL but not for TG, and 2) it's near impossible to get enough Omega-3 fatty acids from food without supplementation

Niacin is also good for very long-term prophylaxis, but it causes some flushes and some itching, so taking it with aspirin should work

It raises HDL very nicely although in very high doses. In lower doses, I guess it's just a good prophylactic drug.

I wonder if ezetimibe would work. IIRC it had way fewer side effects than statins or fibrates

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30480766 Nice. Weaker than most statins, but side effects are much rarer.

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