English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

tchrist

14:00

Of late I have been agonizing (read: nit picking) over infinitesimal (to my colleagues) discrepancies, particular in their figures, of web pages containing diabolically random mixtures of Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, and Source Sans Pro.

Mitch

@tchrist For many eyes (mine) it's nearly impossible to tell the difference even if shown. Like you example above I see the differences as pointed out but then if I step back, I can't tell.

so people aren't mixing and matching fonts on purpose, they're cutting and pasting from many sources (with their different defaults).

If I notice that one piece has one font and another another, I'll try to select the entire document and set one font (or one font size or one justification or alignment etc)... but that's pretty scary because it may change a format that you really did want to keep.

and everything is wysiwyg now so all settings for ranges of letters are hidden so it has to be obvious in order to catch.

For once I can't just blame Microsoft.

all the different editors do that.

tchrist

@Mitch I am increasingly convinced that you moonlight as an instructor at a private middle school for privileged but myopic teenage girls, or younger. Your sensitivity to the pedestrian vocabulary choices in the speech of those of tender years and little experience in the world is exquisite beyond comprehension.

Mitch

Isn't there a list of pairs of old fonts and their modern equivalents (and also the open source equivalents)? I'm googling and all I get are things like 'Identifont' which frankly doesn't ident the fonts very well as far as I can tell

tchrist

If you have just an image, it's harder, but if you have the web page proper, it's trivial. But you knew that already.

@Mitch I don't know what old means in this context, or modern. Does old mean hand-carved metal typefaces that have never yet been digitized?

Mitch

14:20

@tchrist 1) not terribly far off, but language wise I couldn't possibly get my language from them (they're all Asian (East and South) and masters students). 2) My inner voice is more like @KannE but with a lot more profanity. I don't know how well that translates to here.

tchrist

Is translating to here a thing that can be done? Can one also translate to there? Or yonder?

Mitch

@tchrist old = before maybe like 1850? Helvetica vs Arial. Isn't there a modernized version of Garamond and Baskerville?

tchrist

@Mitch Uncountably many faces have been marketed under variants of those names, many undeserving of them, particularly Garamond.

Fidelity varies.

Mitch

@CowperKettle in part 2, don't worry, they find the cat.

I was worried

tchrist

@Mitch For that you should look to the handiwork of specific type designers and punchcutters of renown from the past century, those with many faces accounted to their names, like Robert Slimbach, Carol Twombly, Matthew Carter, and Hermann Zapf. All have designed multiple faces that meet your specifications.

Mitch

14:36

@tchrist I'm just looking for a Fonts 101: Intro to fonts cheat sheet that says 'here are the classic named fonts, here are their modern corresponding versions, here's what you use them for.

tchrist

@Mitch For that I recommend Chapter 11 in Bringhurst, "Prowling the Specimen Books".

It's required reading in many "Introduction to Graphic Design" courses.

@Mitch Did you know that the Stack Exchange network has a website for such questions?

Mitch

@tchrist It's a bit broad. I'm sure I could pick it up on wikipedia somehow

tchrist

@Mitch That seems passingly unlikely to me, but I am constantly surprised. Let me know how that works out for you.

Mitch

14:54

@tchrist In the short few minutes since, it has not been working out for e.

tchrist

One very simple thing I can tell you is that if you confine your selections to the faces designed for display on the primitive computer monitors lo these three decades past, you will be doing everyone a grave injustice.

CowperKettle

FDA to Authorize Pfizer Booster Shots for All Adults This Week

tchrist

@CowperKettle Yes, and possibly also Moderna.

CowperKettle

My mom is getting her booster shot of Sputnik on December 15th

Mitch

Yay!

tchrist

14:57

Are those on a three-month schedule?

CowperKettle

No, every 6 months ))

tchrist

I know you've said it is impossible to get reliable data on the particulars of that vaccine.

CowperKettle

Yes, but based on usage data it must be efficient

I mean data from South America

tchrist

I was also considering how long it remains at what efficiency.

The initial Chinese vaccines do not appear to have held up very well over time. The Russian ones appear to be better than that but I really don't know anything.

CowperKettle

The Russian government has done a totally botched job at providing any kind of reliable data. It is still lying about Sputnik and about another widely used vaccine, EpiVacCorona.

tchrist

15:03

Federal regulators are reviewing Moderna’s application to authorize its coronavirus vaccine booster for all adults and could clear it along with a similar request from Pfizer and its partner BioNTech this week, according to two officials familiar with the situation.

CowperKettle

EpiVacCorona is infamous for the fact that participants in the clinical trial began noticing that nobody of them got any antibodies to covid. They made tests privately.

tchrist

@CowperKettle That's just criminal.

CowperKettle

And there is absolutely zero evidence about EpiVacCorona. The study included dozens of people, or maybe hundreds, and was just panned by every Russian scientist.

And still it is widely used.

There is also the drug called Arbidol, it is widely prescribed to covid sufferers. You guessed it, zero clinical evidence.

tchrist

So much for stage three trials.

CowperKettle

A major health official has a stake in the pharma plant that produces Arbidol.

She is known in Russia as Madame Arbidol

Голикова, Татьяна Алексеевна

Татья́на Алексе́евна Го́ликова (род. 9 февраля 1966, Мытищи, Московская область) — российский государственный деятель, экономист. Заместитель председателя правительства Российской Федерации по вопросам социальной политики с 18 мая 2018 (исполняющая обязанности с 15 по 21 января 2020). Куратор в Северо-Западном федеральном округе с 19 июля 2021 года. Декан факультета государственного управления и финансового контроля Финансового университета при Правительстве РФ. Председатель Счётной палаты Российской Федерации с 20 сентября 2013 по 18 мая 2018. Помощник президента Российской Федерации по вопросам...

This is her.

Tatyana Golikova, aka Madame Arbidol.

She pushed for Arbidol to be included in the Russian Governmental Guidelines on Covid.

tchrist

15:07

@CowperKettle Radix omnium malorum est cupiditas. The nature of Man never changes across the aeons.

CowperKettle

And there is also a Japanese drug developed for flu, which was seen as promising in the spring of 2020. Russia bought the license and rebranded it. Now it's produced in heaps and prescribed under the Governmental Guideline, although it has now been proven to be completely ineffective towards covid.

It's just horrible.

I have doctor friends who really get mad talking about all this.

They are forced to prescribe shit to patients.

tchrist

I am profoundly sorry for your situation. Honestly.

CowperKettle

And this rebranded Japanese drug is being touted on the Putin TV as "unique Russia-developed drug", while everybody with a cell phone can go to Wikipedia and see the lie.

No wonder people are not queueing up for a Sputnik jab.

They think that Sputnik must be bunkum too.

@tchrist Thanks! ))

CowperKettle

17:07

Sialolithiasis

Sialolithiasis (also termed salivary calculi, or salivary stones), is a condition where a calcified mass or sialolith forms within a salivary gland, usually in the duct of the submandibular gland (also termed "Wharton's duct"). Less commonly the parotid gland or rarely the sublingual gland or a minor salivary gland may develop salivary stones. The usual symptoms are pain and swelling of the affected salivary gland, both of which get worse when salivary flow is stimulated, e.g. with the sight, thought, smell or taste of food, or with hunger or chewing. This is often termed "mealtime syndrome...

Today I learned from a random video on Twitter that looked scary.

I did not understand what was going on. It was a sialolith coming out of a person's salivary gland inside his mouth. The human body is so complex.

> Sialolithiasis is common, accounting for about 50% of all disease occurring in the major salivary glands and causing symptoms in about 0.45% of the general population.

How come we know a lot about some stuff that will never ever happen to us, like some very weird terror attacks or something, but are blissfully ignorant of things that are all around.

ihavenoidea

Since it is a really short question, I'll ask here. How do I pronounce this? Context is math-average.

Mitch

17:27

@ihavenoidea "eks bar sub I"

KannE

@Mitch I don't think I have an inner voice. Everybody: Wait, what? Nobody said you did. You didn't understand the statement. Me: I understood it; I'm just making a whole new stmt which happens to include a word or two that you just used in yours. Everybody: Well, you can't just go off on a tangent, turn the whole convo upside down, and still expect me to understand what you're saying w/o a segue or transition or a recognition of some kind of what I just said. Me: OIC, profound. Segue, F U.

My Life Story…

ihavenoidea

@Mitch Thanks! Is it necessary to pronounce "sub"? Would natives find strange if I just say "X bar i" or "X bar of i"?

Mitch

@ihavenoidea but be aware that that is a bit weird because usually taking the mean of a set {x_1, x_2, ... x_n} usually is notated as just $\bar{x}$. With the addition of the subscript it sorta implies that you have more than one set and so more than one average.

ihavenoidea

The "i" in my case represents an iteration of the algorithm, but thanks for the heads up!

Mitch

@ihavenoidea The way it is written in your image, I'd say 'sub i'. It implies that you are intentionally using i as a subscript/as an index into a list of similar items.

@ihavenoidea Oh...so some sort of intermediate mean, computed as you go along?

ihavenoidea

17:31

Precisely

Mitch

whatever context, a subscript is usually pronounced 'sub i'

(I'm sure there are exceptions, but this doesn't seem to be one)

ihavenoidea

Right, I'll keep that in mind, thank you

Mitch

@KannE uh...

yes

what you just said

wait

you totally have an inner voice

I can practically see it from here

maybe you just talk so much that that is your inner voice. Your outer voice -is- what your inner voice is.

I'm not saying you talk too much

but

well

no

I'm still not saying that

@ihavenoidea to be clear, say 'x bar sub i', not those other two, those don't sound right.

Cerberus

18:05

@RegDwigнt Sounds like a good analysis.

@tchrist I hop you shall get more praecipitation soon.

CowperKettle

18:57

Human Organ Atlas: HiP-CT imaging of a healthy human brain using the ESRF-EBS

►

I don't understand this new tech, but looks beautiful.

I haven't read up on the exact mechanism of work and possible usage.

Hierarchical Phase-Contrast Tomography or ‘HiP-CT’. Performed at the ESRF-EBS 4th generation synchrotron in Grenoble

It is probably impossible to use it on a living human, since it's X-ray?

KannE

@Mitch "I can practically see it from here" LOL! Outer voice = inner voice. Got it.

KannE

19:29

@Mitch I'm going to guess phone booths in the Savoy in a Jerry Lewis movie. I don't even know what "the Savoy" really is (hotel, nightclub, restaurant?), and it could be any movie with anybody with dark (or not) hair. Wait, in what movie are the two people talking to each other from separate booths? Or they're the video booths on Bragg Blvd before the Johns Without Hookers got to them in the 80s. Yep, Savoy or that; those are my guesses, or anything in between.

Xanne

22:04

@Mitch Have you tried history of typefaces? toptal.com/designers/ui/typeface-history

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…