English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

CowperKettle

01:24

> Germany has outperformed the US throughout the pandemic. It also has ~10% more of its total population fully vaccinated, and more recently. Today Germany had a pandemic record of new cases, nearly 50,000, and highest deaths (220) since May.

twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1458940234679218203

CowperKettle

01:36

31-yo IT specialist in Moscow tried to treat his depression using a carrot.

Surgeons have successfully removed the carrot from his "backdoor".

tchrist

02:00

@Robusto Colorado is right back where we were a year ago. If you remember, a year ago was not a good time. 95% of ICU beds are occupied, and there are only about 600 hospital beds of any sort whatsoever across the state. Our governor has just declared that this situation ipso facto puts us all at high risk and so has issued an executive order declaring all adults are now eligible for a booster in Colorado. Boulder's are filled with patients from other counties not our own.

Of course what he's really upset about is the idiots who refuse vaccination and fill up the hospitals. But he can't really force them to get vaccinated; he's encouraging all businesses to require it of their workers, and he's said to be considering an order about proof of vaccination for large-venue entrance. But that's as far as he'll go. He's as least as much a "libertarian" as a Democrat, and is worried about his re-election. Your own governess has done far better.

Cerberus

They are considering 2G here.

I think it is already in force in Austria and parts of Germany.

But it will not happen here yet.

tchrist

@Cerberus You aren't up to 5G already? :)

Cerberus

02:17

I looked it up, I think it stands for something Gevaccineerd of Genezen.

tchrist

I think the City of Angels has moved to that.

You would think that this experience will burn indelible scars into the global and individual psyche. Imagine the ten-year-olds who've spent so much of their span under the pandemic's siege. But history suggests this will all be buried and shunned within a generation, and people will pretend it didn't happen. But I doubt it will take another generation for the next one.

Cerberus

Yeah, people just get used to it.

I mean, those measures, not deaths of loved ones.

tchrist

@CowperKettle I know the epidemiologists had been concerned that a 75% vaccination rate would prove insufficient to stop community spread. Now with delta, there is no doubt. You couldn't keep measles in check at that vaccination level, and we won't be able to do so with this virus either. It's just math.

@Cerberus For some reason I was thinking it would have a German expansion not a Dutch one because you mentioned the higher germanies so closely after the lower ones that I lost track of which was which. :)

Cerberus

02:35

@tchrist Well, we cannot stop community spread if we want to protect those 25%.

But what if many of them have already acquired semi-immunity from having been infected?

In Holland, those groups that refuse vaccination are also the ones who were hugely overrepresented in hospitalisations.

And not because they are weak, mainly.

But because they were unable or unwilling to follow the rules, like distancing.

tchrist

Everywhere it is thus. The unvaccinated are 40x more likely to die.

Cerberus

That's not what I mean.

tchrist

But I prefer not to lose even one fortieth of my vulnerable kith and kin, or self.

Cerberus

People in the Bible Belt still congregated in large churches when it was sort of forbidden to congregate, so the percentage of infected is larger amongst them compared with the entire population.

Now they refuse to be vaccinated.

tchrist

Sure.

Cerberus

02:38

But those of them that survived are more likely to have acquired some immunity now.

And this applies a fortiori to non-Western immigrants.

Those ca. 13% of the population are relatively unhealthy, but also relatively young, which I think should cancel each other out; but they populated more than 50% of Corona hospital beds at various moments.

So a large percentage of them have acquired some immunity.

And now they are refusing to be vaccinated.

But perhaps they are now less likely than the average person to spread the disease, because they have more immunity on average.

You see my point?

We may not need as high a percentage of vaccination because of this effect.

tchrist

These small, independent Protestant congregations that choose to be self-destructive like this have never any sense to me. I'm no Catholic but Papa Paco gets credit for a full throated encouragement of vaccination world-wide, and harbors no nutjob objections in his conscience about bullshit stem-cellline derivation moral chest pounding.

Cerberus

That goes without saying.

My point is about herd immunity and what percentage of people having been vaccinated is required for it.

tchrist

@Cerberus Oh I don't know that at all. A more robust immune response than the default one seen in virally naïve individuals has been shown to shorten the days they're infectious but not the infectiousness during those days.

Cerberus

Here they say you are 75% less likely to spread the disease if you've been vaccinated.

tchrist

I don't know that "herd immunity" is attainable with this virus. It certainly isn't with the coronaviruses that give us colds. They just don't happen to kill us these days.

Robusto

02:47

@tchrist Yeah, same here.

Cerberus

And, indeed, the spread was reduced tremendously once many people had been vaccinated.

Not enough, but still.

tchrist

@Cerberus What, if you're sick with it? That's not what I was told.

Robusto

I absolutely cannot fathom the willful stupidity of people who refuse a lifeline when it's being thrown to them.

Cerberus

No, just as I said it.

It all adds up: less likely to be infected; infectious for a shorter time if have been infected; and less infectious when you are.

Robusto

I had to cancel a trip to see my granddaughter on her first birthday because her parents—both doctors, both fully vaxed—went to a celebration and subsequently tested positive for the virus.

tchrist

02:49

You're less apt to become infected, by a long shot. And if you do come down with it, your case will be much less severe and rather shorter than without vaccination. But I've seen vaccinated family members suffer for weeks from this thing, and would not wish that on anyone, nor trust that somehow they aren't going to spread it to others. That absolutely did that very thing. It did NOT stop transmission.

Robusto

I'm sorry, I didn't mean her parents. I mean my daughter-in-law's parents.

Cerberus

Did I say by 100%?

tchrist

@Cerberus Some of my vaccinated relatives caught it and within a few days had given it to other vaccinate relatives. I can't think in percentages when it's personal like this. I know what happened, and it happened, and that's 100%.

Cerberus

@Robusto And they had been seeing their daughter and your son, so that all needed to be quarantined?

@tchrist I do not understand this.

From what I read, the chance is greatly reduced.

Robusto

@Cerberus No. My son's family is in LA, her parents are in Las Vegas. The celebration was to be held at their house in LV.

tchrist

02:51

I don't care about "the chance is greatly reduced". And if it kills your mother, neither will you.

I don't know how herd immunity works with this virus now. I just don't.

Robusto

It is baffling.

tchrist

@Robusto Like horses dying of thirst at the watering hole.

Robusto

For some of them it's an expression of their pride and independence. "You can't make me help myself!"

But it's more like a celebration of their stupidity.

All in the name of "owning the libs."

Cerberus

@Robusto Ah, so it was cancelled because those grandparents could not attend?

tchrist

I remember not understanding why you had to keep getting your pets vaccination boosters for the same thing year in and year out, where once they've finished their series you don't expect to have to give kids new yearly vaccinations for measles or small pox or polio or whooping cough or all the rest. I was an idiot.

Robusto

02:56

@Cerberus No, because it was to be held at their place, midway between the families.

tchrist

Weird, I thought Las Vegas was east of you. :)

Cerberus

Why didn't they have the celebration without the infected?

Robusto

Las Vegas, New Mexico is. There are so many Spanish-named places around here.

CowperKettle

Spinlaunch Suborbital Test Launch 22 Oct 2021

►

tchrist

@Robusto Los hay.

CowperKettle

02:57

Interesting system.

Robusto

Doesn't Las Vegas mean "The Meadows"?

tchrist

Aye.

Robusto

Neither of them look much like meadows at all.

tchrist

Spring-fed or something.

Yes, I know. They stole all the water.

LVNM gets 16 inches of rain a year.

CowperKettle

> If there's no water in the tap,
The kikes must've drunk the water up.
(Ironic Russian saying, mocking the antisemites)

Robusto

02:59

@tchrist I guess it's better than La Cienega.

tchrist

LVNV gets 5. Inches. Per. Year.

CowperKettle

> Если в кране нет воды,
Значит, выпили жиды.

Robusto

@CowperKettle It's a bit telling that pogrom is from a Russian word.

CowperKettle

And the verse continues as "If there is actually water in the tap, the kikes must have peed in there".

Robusto

@tchrist We have the Jornada del Muerto here.

Jornada del Muerto

The name Jornada del Muerto translates from Spanish as "Single Day's Journey of the Dead Man" or even "Route of the Dead Man, though the modern literal translation is closer to "The Working Day of the Dead". It was the name given by the Spanish conquistadors to the Jornada del Muerto Desert basin, and the particularly dry 100-mile (160 km) stretch of a route through it from Las Cruces to Socorro, New Mexico. The trail led northward from central Spanish colonial New Spain, present-day Mexico, to the farthest reaches of the viceroyalty in northern Nuevo México Province (the area around the upper...

tchrist

03:03

@Robusto Porque no os bastaba el Día de los Muertos, desde luego.

Robusto

Por supuesto.

tchrist

@CowperKettle That "kikes" bit reminds me that somehow I grew up unnaturally insulated from that endless parade of pejorative terms for groups of people you were trying to drum up hate against. It simply did not happen in my family, and it would have scandalized us to hear it from one of our own. But the world is not like that, and I did not understand this for a long, long, long time.

I don't mean "you" you, of course.

The Llano Estacado in the trans-Pecos is still a deadly dry area. No wonder they named it Socorro.

"The Stakèd Plain"

CowperKettle

I don't understand the difference between "deciding" and "choosing" from this quote. And how on earth should it make us "human".

tchrist

Me neither. He appears to attribute some moral moving force behind "choice".

CowperKettle

How should "judgement" be different from "calculation", if the neurons that constitute my brain basically conduct calculations for food.

Cerberus

03:12

Yeah it's poorly worded.

But it is a classical paradox.

tchrist

Probably this makes more sense to the moral philosophers. Maybe consider mercy versus justice.

Cerberus

A Kantian antinomy.

CowperKettle

There was a famous study of actual court judges, who were busy all day deciding what fines to issue for road traffic violations, and the statistic showed that the closeness of the breakfast or the noon meal affected their decisions.

Cerberus

> For Kant there are four antinomies,[3][4][5] connected with:[6]

the limitation of the universe in respect to space and time
the theory that the whole consists of indivisible atoms (whereas, in fact, none such exist)
the problem of free will in relation to universal causality
the existence of a universal being[2]

CowperKettle

The judges were more merciful depending on whether they have recently had a meal. Even though the stream of cases was basically the same, cookie-cutter traffic volations.

tchrist

03:13

A computer program can make decisions that never vary. A human being cannot and should not.

Cerberus

Small influences are inevitable.

Without any quantification, nothing to worry about.

CowperKettle

@tchrist Because a human being is a machine that is more complex.

There is no magical "judgement" in that.

tchrist

No, because we're very bad programmers. :)

> “For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.” G.K. Chesterton

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Repeating words in answer (87): Is “ruddy” an actual Briticism? by user438535 on english.SE

CowperKettle

We are programmed to idealize children. It's an instinct.

tchrist

03:16

Only because without that programming, the race perishes.

So those people did not procreate successfully.

Cerberus

Idealise children??

They're super annoying.

CowperKettle

Hehe

tchrist

In turn, with children parents create beings that are programmed to idealize them.

CowperKettle

I was walking past a school, and nearby walked a kid. And as he reached the gate, he called his parent on the cellphone, just to say "I've arrived".

I could not imagine that back in the 1980s

tchrist

Think about us oldsters.

CowperKettle

03:21

And there are GPS transmitters now for children, very handy. The parent can always see where the child is, on the interactive map

tchrist

We didn't get helicoptered.

We were free-range children.

CowperKettle

When my parents bought a 8 yo me a handwatch, my grandma berated them, because a boy should only be given his own actual watch at about age 16. Before that, it's luxury and pampering and all kinds of evil.

tchrist

It is the duty of a child to get himself to school and back on his own. Daily confirmation of this act would be ridiculous.

@CowperKettle I certainly had no such thing at that age. What would I use it for? I'd just get it broken.

CowperKettle

@tchrist I broke it on the tennis court, forgot to take it off.

tchrist

Of course.

Children these days expect a watch to tell time by holding it to their ear and listening to the announcement.

O Phone Watch, tell me the time!

"Child mortality rate (under five years old) in the United States, from 1800 to 2020"

The more recent of the two reversals was the previous pandemic. The earlier one was from a bunch of them.

> The child mortality rate in the United States, for children under the age of five, was 462.9 deaths per thousand births in 1800. This means that for every thousand babies born in 1800, over 46 percent did not make it to their fifth birthday. Over the course of the next 220 years, this number has dropped drastically, and the rate has dropped to its lowest point ever in 2020 where it is just seven deaths per thousand births.

Although the child mortality rate has decreased greatly over this 220 year period, there were two occasions where it increased; in the 1870s, as a result of the fourth…

This time it isn't killing children in droves.

So far.

CowperKettle

03:30

> Mutations in the Delta and Kappa variants of #SARSCoV2 decrease binding to antibodies but do not increase host receptor binding, a new Science study reports. The authors suggest these changes emerged to help the virus escape immune recognition. science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abl8506

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and multivariate pattern analysis, Thibault et al. found that small portions of the basal ganglia in the human brain act as common neural substrates for both tool use and syntax in language.

> In a behavioral experiment, they showed that learning a novel task that involves the use of a tool also improves performance in a complex language task. These results further support the hypothesis of a coevolution of tool use and language.

tchrist

That's provocative.

CowperKettle

08:58

Putin's "court" has commanded to shut down Russia's oldest human rights organization, founded in 1989 by the famous Soviet dissident Andrey Sakharov.

The organization was deemed a "foreign agent" and is now forced to close and disband.

For "violation of legislation against foreign influence".

Andrei Sakharov

Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (Russian: Андре́й Дми́триевич Са́харов, IPA: [ɐnˈdrʲej dmʲiˈtrʲɪjevʲɪtɕ ˈsaxərəf]; 21 May 1921 – 14 December 1989) was a Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident, Nobel laureate, and activist for disarmament, peace and human rights.He became renowned as the designer of the Soviet Union's RDS-37, a codename for Soviet development of thermonuclear weapons. Sakharov later became an advocate of civil liberties and civil reforms in the Soviet Union, for which he faced state persecution; these efforts earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975. The Sakharov Prize, which is awarded...

Memorial was the first large organization devoted to collecting all data on every person who suffered from Soviet repressions.

CowperKettle

09:16

As soon as the lockdown ended, vaccination rates slumped. There is enough vaccine for everyone, and now you don't even have to enrol in an electronic queue, just walk into your local polyclinic and voila. People don't want to.

Memorial (society)

Memorial (Russian: Мемориа́л, IPA: [mʲɪmərʲɪˈaɫ]) was formally established in Moscow in January 1989 as an international historical and civil rights society. Between 1987 and 1990, while the USSR was still in existence, 23 branches of the society were set up and became active. When the Soviet Union collapsed, branches of Memorial in east and south Ukraine remained affiliated to the Russian network. Some of the oldest branches of Memorial in northwest and central Russia, the Urals and Siberia have since developed their own websites, documenting independent local research and publicising the crimes...

> The move would deal a grave blow to an organisation that was born out of the “glasnost” reforms of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s and has become a leading voice in defence of basic freedoms as President Vladimir Putin has cracked down on dissent.

CowperKettle

09:38

That pesky Poland, it started the WWII, now it's at it again!

Good for us Russians, we have our Adolf Putler to protect us from Poland.

Xanne

10:04

Goodness, isn’t a T-160 with a nuclear threat a bit of overkill for border patrol?

2

They must have some drones or something a little lighter to make whatever point it is the want to make? Luchenko wants to annoy the folks who gave him a hard time in Belarus and amass Iraquis and others to give Europe trouble . . . is Putin really behind this?

Or is this to distract from Putin making another move on Ukraine, which in turn detracts from China moving on Taiwan?

S.M.T

10:22

Hii guys , back after a long time.

A concave lens forms the image of an object kept at a distance 20 cm in front of it, at a distance 10 cm on the side of the object.

Here , my difficulty in understanding is with the English of Q.

In the Q , does it mean to say image = 20cm or 10cm. I’m not able to get it.

CowperKettle

11:08

@Xanne Who knows. Only mind-readers.

> Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels His awful hand.

CowperKettle

11:21

Matt E. Эллен

@S.M.T that it is too ambiguous and "on the side of" is weird. does it mean "to the side of"?

if something is happening "on the side of the object" then I would expect the side of the object to be changed in some way

so the object is 20cm from the lens and the image is 10cm from the lens, on the same side of the lens as the object

CowperKettle

11:37

Swedish word of the day: lördagsgodis (Saturday sweets) bbc.com/reel/video/p0b1ks66/…

lördagsgodis

Noun: lördagsgodis n (uncountable)

candy as a Saturday treat
1995, Marianne Hedenbro, Våra otvivelaktigt goda seder
2000, Anna Lena Wik-Thorsell, Social skillnad visar sig i tänderna

Used in conjunction with the common custom in Sweden to only allow children to eat candy on Saturdays.

The Swedish word for child is barn

> a kind of participle to bära (“to bear, to carry, as in childbirth”).

Oh, so I thought. Related to born

Matt E. Эллен

The Scots word for child is bairn

@CowperKettle my parents had the same custom :D

they're not Swedish AFAIK

CowperKettle

Ah!

Russian military parachutists have just had a surprise training exercise 50 km from the Polish border. They were airdropped and landed at a specified location. novayagazeta.ru/articles/2021/11/12/…

The Russian Ministry of Defence said that the dropped soldiers will now hold an exercise in "capturing and holding a foothold".

Belarusian commandos are also taking part.

It's a bit late in the year for invading Poland.

It's November, not August.

twitter.com/Den_2042/status/1459087841691115525

Ukraine is provoking Russia by its very existence.

tchrist

13:35

Booster shots are most popular in poorly vaccinated states where coronavirus rages

> In swaths of the country where health officials will not impose mask and vaccine mandates to curb the virus’s spread, or have had their powers stripped away by Republican state lawmakers or governors, boosters are one of the few shields left for those worried about contracting and spreading the virus.

“It’s really become impossible for local public health authorities to implement any sort of social distancing measures that could help slow down the spread,” said Matt Kelley, CEO of the Montana Public Health Institute. “Getting that booster shot is one of the few tangible things that you c…

@Cerberus Our leaders are gutless wonders, cowards (not cowherds), and closet insurrectionists. In many places they forbid all public health measures that would bring relief from the scourge. People feel helpless against this. Hence the quote, "Getting that booster shot is one of the few tangible things that you can do to protect yourself."

CowperKettle

Sorry, there will be no performance. We pissed on the props.

S.M.T

@MattE.Эллен Yes. But why is it like this ?

I think image distance = 20cm

Because it says image of an object

tchrist

14:17

@CowperKettle And this interferes with the performance exactly how? :)

CowperKettle

@tchrist I don't know, but it's a popular meme in Russia

tchrist

Interesting. The Minnesotan storyteller Garrison Keillor often uses "Did the dog pee in your shoes?" when illustrating that everybody has it rough.

It's supposed to illustrate a certain stoicism against such mundane troubles as the weather in the far north.

Matt E. Эллен

14:35

@S.M.T I don't know. I would not write it like that

Mitch

@tchrist Whatever is. going on in your life, that is really uncool.

tchrist

> The blind man’s seeing eye dog
Pissed on the blind man’s shoe.
So the blind man said, “Here, Rover,
Here’s a chunk of beef for you.”
And his wife said, “Don’t reward him
For peeing on you, dear.”
He said, “I’m trying to find out where’s his mouth
So I can kick him in the rear.”

Mitch

poor dog. maybe he's blind too.

YAY I fixed my double-space-replaced-with-period-space option and turned it off.

LIFE IS GOOD!

Hey WTF you sniffing near my shoes.

tchrist

But not deaf.

> SS: But---- (PAUSE AND SOUND OF DOG PEEING ON SHOE). Oh my. Oh dear. This is outrageous. This is--- I am----- you are not----- Waiter! Waiter---- (FOOTSTEPS APPROACH) Waiter, this dog ---

TK: Madame, I am not a waiter. I am a maitre'd.

SS: I don't care. This dog has just expressed herself on my shoe.

TK: Well, how would you like me to express myself on your other shoe----

SS: This dog has ruined my shoe. Look at this. That dog did that.

TK: That is a French dog, madame. I'm sure she had her reasons.

Robusto

@tchrist Our hospitals are now at 140% capacity.

tchrist

14:43

@Robusto This will become grimmer as the year fails and there is no longer the option of placing them in tents in the parking lots.

Robusto

BTW, I saw the original article about the troop buildup on Ukraine's border. It used the term "amassing" to describe Russia's gathering of troops. It should be noted, at least here in the EL&U environs, that the customary term would be massing. Collins: to form (people or things) or (of people or things) to join together into a mass: the crowd massed outside the embassy.

One amasses wealth; one masses troops. QED

Such sloppiness, as Twain noted, "grates upon the fastidious ear."

Jun 9 '11 at 12:47, by Robusto

"The difference between the right word and almost the right word is like the difference between lightning and a lightning bug." — Mark Twain

@tchrist Yeah, and I'm going to need surgery soon. I hope there's a bed for me.

S.M.T

14:59

@MattE.Эллен Where is my grammar going wrong can you guide pls

Matt E. Эллен

@S.M.T how do you mean? did you write the question?

I find it difficult to parse the question. The grammar isn't wrong, but the semantics are ambiguous.

> A concave lens forms the image of an object kept at a distance 20 cm in front of it

does the it refer to the lens or the object?

or the image?

probably the lens

but it would be better to remove all doubt. Something like "An image is formed by a concave lens and an object 20 cm in front of the lens"

> at a distance 10 cm on the side of the object

Robusto

@MattE.Эллен Yeah, that is confusing.

It's either in front or on the side. It can't be both.

Matt E. Эллен

@Robusto exactly. also, what they really mean is "on the same side of the lens as the object" but have tried to compress the meaning into too few words

and there's no way to parse that meaning from the question, you have toalready know how a concave lens setup looks

Robusto

@CowperKettle See my note above.

CowperKettle

16:51

Good news: The cocktail, manufactured by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, reduced the risk of COVID-19 infection by more than 80% for more than eight months

S.M.T

@MattE.Эллен K.

Mitch