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01:00 - 09:0010:00 - 22:00

10:18
They’re going to be disappointed when they find out that bacon ain’t vegan.
10:36
Word of the day: tern
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Mostly punctuation marks in answer, repeating characters in answer (114): In the tube or on the tube? by user438630 on english.SE
10:52
Word of the minute: cloth hall
I don't understant why the word "premium" is used in "insurance premium"
Why not "installment"?
Or "subscription"?
11:08
A premium may be paid in installments. But it may change on renewal. Just a convention, apparently.
Poland is sort of an outlier there.
11:24
The Merchandise Mart (or the Merch Mart, or the Mart) is a commercial building located in downtown Chicago, Illinois. When it was opened in 1930, it was the largest building in the world, with 4 million square feet (372,000 m2) of floor space. The Art Deco structure is located at the junction of the Chicago River's branches. The building is a leading retailing and wholesale destination, hosting 20,000 visitors and tenants per day as of the late 2000s.Built by Marshall Field & Co. and later owned for over half a century by the Kennedy family, the Mart centralized Chicago's wholesale goods business...
Not as interesting as cloth halls, but a next step.
Overall, though, Chicago has some historic architecture, besides Mrs, O’Leary’s barn.
The Wrigley Building is a skyscraper located at 400–410 North Michigan Avenue on Chicago's Near North Side. It is located on the Magnificent Mile directly across Michigan Avenue from the Tribune Tower. It was built to house the corporate headquarters of the Wrigley Company. == History == When ground was broken for the Wrigley Building in 1920, there were no major office buildings north of the Chicago River. The Michigan Avenue Bridge, which spans the river just south of the building, was still under construction. The land was selected by chewing gum magnate William Wrigley Jr. for the headquarters...
11:47
The Palmolive Building, formerly the Playboy Building, is a 37-storey Art Deco building at 919 N. Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Built by Holabird & Root, it was completed in 1929 and was home to the Colgate-Palmolive-Peet corporation. The Palmolive Building was renamed the Playboy Building in 1965 when Playboy Enterprises purchased the leasehold of the building. It was home to the editorial and business offices of Playboy magazine from that time until 1989 when Playboy moved its offices to 680 N Lake Shore Drive. Playboy had sold the leasehold in 1980 and signed a 10-year lease that expired in 1990...
12:34
@Xanne But taken separately, the word premium has strikingly different senses from installment
That's why it stumps me
13:20
@CowperKettle the insurance person who first chose that word was either a genius or a master of torture (ok, both)
It makes no sense, since it means 'payment'. I can't think of any intortuous interpretation that explains the use there.
It's on the order of calling a dog a piece of candy.
Sure if you're in the business you totally know that when you say 'candy' you'll get a lick in the face. But people buying insurance are just led astray.
 
1 hour later…
14:32
> As odd in its way as the old-time, lengthy speech is today’s academic article. In many fields, these tend to be so imposingly long that few readers get through them. They can seem about as inutile as the sculptures up high on European cathedrals, where, for centuries, no one could see them but God.
@Mitch Are you used to McWhorter using useless words? Well, he is.
> 1484 W. Caxton tr. Subtyl Historyes & Fables Esope ɪɪɪ. vii Despreyse and flee al synne and vyce, Whiche ben inutyle harmeful and dommageable.
> 1599 A. Hume Hymnes sig. B3 And did the tung inutile heill Of Zacharie that was dum.
> 1756 T. Gray Lett. (1819) II. xci. 10 Having been in a very listless, unpleasant, and inutile state of mind.
> 1894 Daily News 12 June 5/6 Another..member rising to carry on an obviously inutile conversation.
> 𝘢1492 W. Caxton tr. Vitas Patrum (1495) ɪɪ. f. ccxlviiᵛ/1 The moneye whiche was alredy inutylly spende.
The OED suggests that it may have fell into disuse after a few centuries but seems to have been revived with deliberate Frenchnessing. Their entry, however, has not yet been updated for their Third Edition.
> Pronunciation:/ɪnˈjuːtɪl/
Forms: Also Middle English–1500s -yle, 1600s -ill.
Etymology: < French inutile, < Latin inūtilis , < in- (in- prefix4) + ūtilis useful. Originally probably stressed inuˈtile, but iˈnutile in A. Hume 1590.

It appears to have gone out of use, except as an occasional Gallicism, before 1700, and is marked as obsolete in dictionaries; but of recent years it has come into use again, perhaps as a re-adoption from French.
Whoa! I would never have guessed /ɪnˈjuːtɪl/. In my mind's ear I heard /ɪnuˈtɪːl/. Clearly, I am corrupted of ear and mind.
15:07
@Xanne It has some nice details, but it is too repetitive.
15:58
@tchrist that's not very /uːtɪl/
@tchrist he's playing around and very open about and explains himself three times. Insurance on the other hand tends towards rent-seeking
@Mitch It's just the word inutile that I was referencing. Its definition is useless.
16:54
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Manually reported question (93): What do you think about the SADAQATOKEN project? by Sadoqi Eljabir on english.SE
 
3 hours later…
19:29
A novel vesicular organelle was recently discovered in 2015 by a research group at Tsinghua University headed by Dr. Yu that is dependent on cell migration and named accordingly as migrasomes1. They are classified as extracellular vesicles formed on the intersections of retraction fibers trailing behind migrating cells.
 
2 hours later…
21:34
@tchrist what you're saying is useless to me
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in answer (88): Word for describing the emotion of helping someone by Shilla Moe on english.SE
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