English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

tchrist

00:00

It's a dummy reporter from Denver. She doesn't know our county, clearly.

Cerberus

@tchrist Huh, that is an extremely high price.

How many square metres would that house be?

tchrist

It's a dummy reporter from Denver. She doesn't know our county, clearly.

@Cerberus Oh I don't know, we don't have those here. :)

Cerberus

I wish wonder what the price per square metre is.

The average house in Amsterdam is around 500,000 or 600,000, I think.

But I praesume it will be much smaller than the average house in Boulder?

tchrist

The little red balloon in the bottom is where the fire started. It grew east to the place that's labelled the Marshall Fire. Notice where Boulder is. 5300 Eldorado Spring Drive where it started is completely NOT TO THE WEST OF BOULDER. It's south by southeast. Dummy reporter.

Cerberus

If prices are distributed normally, average and media should be equal, shouldn't they?

tchrist

00:03

The yellow star in the top left is where I live.

Cerberus

Quite far away.

tchrist

@Cerberus The median is not the mean. It is the price below which 50% of the homes were sold and above which the other 50% were sold.

Cerberus

I know, but isn't that equal to the mean when the distribution is normal?

I forgot.

tchrist

In a truly normal distribution, yes. But it never works out that way in real life.

Cerberus

But it should be close enough, if the distribution is close enough to normal...

tchrist

00:06

> In November 2021, the median listing home price in Boulder, CO was $894.9K, trending up 13.4% year-over-year. The median listing home price per square foot was $487. The median home sold price was $877.5K.

Cerberus

Ah, right.

tchrist

If you cube the square foot price you should get your meter box. :)

Cerberus

It should be times nine, no?

Then divided by 1.2 to Euros.

tchrist

4 meters is 13 feet.

Cerberus

€3653.

I think we're nearing €10,000 here.

@tchrist I think our rate of growth is similar.

tchrist

00:09

mac(tchrist)% units '487 dollars/feet^2' dollars/meter^2
	* 5242.0244
	/ 0.000190766

Cerberus

Okay, so it's € 4512 per square metre.

While we're nearing € 10,000.

I did (13ft/4m)² * $487 / $1.14.

tchrist

No normal person can afford to buy homes at these prices.

Cerberus

Indeed.

And rents are even more expensive.

tchrist

Indeed.

Cerberus

If you can get a mortgage, you can have a cheap house; if not, you have no house.

Because interest rates are much, much lower than the rent you would pay for the same house here.

Partly because of tax cuts on interest.

tchrist

00:14

> The average rent for an apartment in Boulder is $2,210. The average rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in Boulder, CO is currently $1,550. This is a 3% increase compared to the previous year.

Cerberus

How large would this apartment be?

tchrist

Lord.

Cerberus

I think the Lord lives in a dark tower.

3

tchrist

apartmentlist.com/renter-life/average-rent-in-boulder

Cerberus

Or do you think he occupies a mere apartment on the top floor?

tchrist

00:16

> The average rent for a Boulder studio apartment is $2,009
The average rent for a Boulder 1-bedroom apartment is $2,451
The average rent for a Boulder 2-bedroom apartment is $2,904
The average rent for a Boulder 3-bedroom apartment is $4,312

You'd need to bunk 6 per bedroom to pay for it all, at least as a student.

> The average rent for an apartment in Boulder is $2,210. The cost of rent varies depending on several factors, including location, size, and quality.

The average size for a Boulder, CO apartment is 824 square feet, but this number varies greatly depending on unit type, with cheap and luxury alternatives for houses and apartments alike. Studio apartments are the smallest and most affordable, 1-bedroom apartments are closer to the average, while 2-bedroom apartments and 3-bedroom apartments offer a more generous square footage.

That's why the working class must commute from our suburbs.

Like Superior. Oops, bad idea, that.

This is a college town with over 30,000 students, who all somehow make do, one way or the other.

I don't actually know how they do it. I haven't looked at that whole scene since I moved here 31 years ago.

Cerberus

Yeah, I think the average student pays €600 or €700 here, for a small room.

Let's say 12 m².

Your bed, a closet, a desk, and it's full.

tchrist

The square root of 12 is about 3 and a half.

So maybe 10 feet if you count the wall.

Bur that's just a sleeping room. You have to eat and poop and all.

But it sounds like a dorm, yes.

Cerberus

You share those spaces.

Kitchen and bathroom and loo.

tchrist

Yeah, those are dorms not apartments.

Cerberus

They may or may not be a common room.

No apartments, indeed.

tchrist

00:27

They don't count into any of those prices I gave above.

Cerberus

Nor dormitories: just a regular house where several people rent a room each.

Yeah, I mentioned them because the smallest spaces have the highest price per square metre.

tchrist

You aren't SUPPOSED to do that here. Zoning restrictions. The landlord can get in trouble.

But it of course happens.

You aren't supposed to have more than 3 unrelated people living together. Breeds babies or something, I dunno.

> The current code, 9-8-5 Occupancy of Dwelling Units, allows up to three unrelated persons in low-density residential districts and up to four in medium-density and high-density districts.

> Removing or significantly increasing occupancy limits could normalize a number of currently illicit rentals and increase legal housing availability.
 Higher occupancy limits could enable new housing models. For example, new student housing tends to default to four bedrooms, yet other unit types could emerge if occupancy limits change.

Cerberus

@tchrist Yes, it isn't allowed everywhere. I think you need to get a permit, nowadays.

But many houses are already like that.

tchrist

A dorm or a fraternity or any other boarding house has different rules than those.

>  Two exceptions to the occupancy limits: The cooperative housing ordinance allows an increase over the occupancy limit on a limited and selective basis. There are also a limited number of legal non-conforming units which have occupancies greater than currently allowed in the zone.

> Preliminary outreach found that many residents, particularly in single-family neighborhoods, are concerned that raising the occupancy limit could create more noise, activity, trash, traffic, and parking problems.

"Party houses"

> Boulder: Current occupancy limits have been in place since 1981. Occupancy limits in Boulder are enforced on a complaint basis.

Elsewhere: Most university towns nationwide have occupancy limits in place; however, a number of Northeast cities have no limits on unrelated roommates.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Post is mostly images, toxic answer detected (98): Residual soil or surplus soil‭ by ur mom‭ on english.SE

Robusto

00:46

@tchrist Foot and a half?

tchrist

@Robusto yes

Robusto

We got a mere taste here. Sandía snow is all gone now.

tchrist

Also known as a cubit.

Robusto

I know the term from sesquicentennial.

tchrist

The Longest Year in Human History (46 B.C.E.)

►

@Cerberus ^^^^^ That one's for you.

Although I can make no excuse for him calling Labienus /ləˈbinəs/ instead of um, how it's spelled. :)

Maybe it would have sounded naughty in English?

I wonder whether you can detect the speaker's native accent.

Heck, I wonder if @Robusto even can. Once you hear the tell, it will jump out at you.

If you just want to hear why that was the longest year in human history, skip to 21:50, but the whole part leading up to it is a nice summary of his reforms while Dictator.

Robusto

01:17

@tchrist ¿Cómo?

tchrist

The link up there to The Longest Year in Human History. Can you discern which regional accent the speaker is sporting?

He speaks almost like you and me.

But not quite.

Robusto

Is it "utterly" sounding like "udderly"?

tchrist

Nope, that's standard on this continent.

Listen to his diphthongs, the two phonemic ones.

It's subtle, not strong the way it is in, oh for example, Fargo.

Robusto

Like in ayund?

tchrist

He raises both his phonemic diphthongs before an unvoiced stop.

Not just the one in mice like you and I do, but also albeit only a tiny bit the other one, the one in about.

Robusto

01:22

So Canadian?

tchrist

Ottawa.

Yes, but near us.

Just from the other side of the lake.

I used to teach there a lot.

Robusto

Michigan?

tchrist

He's from Ontario.

Robusto

Which is Canada.

tchrist

So he has a tiny bit of "Canadian raising" in both his phonemic diphthongs, not just the one that nearly anyone on this continent has.

But it's so subtle it's easy to miss. It's not like in Fargo.

Robusto

01:24

OK.

Well, Fargo was laying it on way too thick. I suppose to make a point.

tchrist

Indeed. That said, you can hear that up there at times. More in Oshkosh than Green Bay for no apparent reason. Or of course in Duluth/Superior.

So the year 46 BC was the longest year in human history. What Caesar did to the calendar was PHENOMENAL! It makes this look like a joke:

mac(tchrist)% cal 9 1752
   September 1752
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
       1  2 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30



mac(tchrist)%

Robusto

I ride with one guy from northern Wisconsin who doesn't have an appreciable accent. He's been away from there for some time, but I really don't notice any Wisconsonish in his speech.

tchrist

That was in Boston that year. But in Rome in 46 BC, Caesar wrestled with the very seasons.

Robusto

I'm still for 13 months of 28 days, plus a New Year's Day (or sometimes two).

tchrist

There were 445 days that year.

Robusto

01:28

Something had to be done.

tchrist

He had to add in three more months to bring it all back around.

We all still use his calendar the world around. The Gregorian tweak was super tiny.

@Robusto You've been listening to the ladies again. That or the Hebrews. Or both.

Robusto

Our current calendar is too lumpy.

tchrist

If you skip to 21:50 in that video, you'll finally understand why our calendar has such weird months.

That's where our lumpiness comes from.

CowperKettle

Nobody talks about Jesus' miracle of having 12 close friends in his 30s

tchrist

12 close MALE friends

It all falls away with the years.

I also rather like his "Human civilization did an oopsie" video.

The Bronze Age Collapse (approximately 1200 B.C.E.)

►

CowperKettle

02:05

Interesting Youtube channel, I've added it to favez

Cerberus

02:21

@tchrist Nice summary.

I forget: when was the beginning of the year shifted to January?

tchrist

@Cerberus It's complicated.

Most of us say when Caesar got his way with the calendar.

There are ecclesiastical arguments placing it near Easter, and it was long celebrated as such in England.

So it took a long time to undo that. But Caesar started January 1.

> The beginning of the legal new year was moved from March 25 to January 1. Finally, 11 days were dropped from the month of September 1752.

That's only in English cultures like ours.

Or maybe they moved it in 1600. It's hard to track. Easier to go back to the Republic and ignore the Easter bits.

Oops, I meant Kingdom!

> In many countries the New Year begins on January 1. However, this wasn’t always the case. In fact, for centuries, other dates marked the start of the calendar, including March 25 and December 25. So how did January 1 become New Year’s Day?

We can partly thank the Roman king Numa Pompilius. According to tradition, during his reign (c. 715–673 BCE) Numa revised the Roman republican calendar so that January replaced March as the first month. It was a fitting choice, since January was named after Janus, the Roman god of all beginnings; March celebrated Mars, the god of war. (Some sources cla…

Cerberus

> January became the first month of the calendar year either under Numa or under the Decemvirs about 450 BC (Roman writers differ).

tchrist

Yup.

Cerberus

About his accent, I have no idea, sounds North American to me, possibly slightly Canadian?

I know little about North American accents.

Or any accents at all.

tchrist

Only very slightly, but yes. He also says plague with a slightly different vowel than I have. And it shines through in without.

Cerberus

02:28

Hmm I don't remember hearing without nor plague.

tchrist

At least, if you are exquisitely sensitive to that.

He has many, many other very good videos on Ancient Rome.

Cerberus

I probably wouldn't have noticed if you hadn't asked.

tchrist

Mostly it was nice hearing a guy who didn't have a damned Southern Californian accent that makes everything sound to wrong.

He talks very very close to how Rob and I talk.

Cerberus

Is that like a surfer dude?

tchrist

Yes.

Cerberus

02:30

I'm actually not sure I remember what that sounded like, but it can't be good.

tchrist

They say gahn not gone, so to speak. I can never get used to that.

Cerberus

@tchrist Good to know.

@tchrist Oh my gaaahd?

Isn't that also done in other places, on the East Coast?

tchrist

At first hearing him I thought he was from my side of Lake Superior, but he's from the farther shore.

Cerberus

Ah, were both of you from that lake? I forgot.

tchrist

@Cerberus Not exactly, no. The East Coast doesn't have the cot–caught merger so badly as the damned West Coast does. In Pittsburgh, though, they do have a weird version of the merger where all those have the rounded THOUGHT vowel.

@Cerberus We're from the south end of Lake Michigan.

Cerberus

02:33

@tchrist I seem to recall The Nanny's mother crying out "oh my Gaaahd".

tchrist

Pittsburgh has Uncle Dawn, Awnt Dawn for Uncle Don and Aent Dawn.

@Cerberus That's not the COT–CAUGHT merger. That's the FATHER–BOTHER merger. The Californians have all of those combined.

Cerberus

Uhh.

So complicated.

tchrist

Yes, everything sounds like uhh when Californians tulk.

Cerberus

I suppose I would pronounce gone longer than god.

tchrist

They say walk like wahk.

@Cerberus Yeah.

CowperKettle

02:37

I think that the written data on the failure of civilization in 1200 BC might be too scarce to build any theories. For instance, in the Russian Empire there were severe famines and economic disruption, and just 5 years later, all was well. Had only a couple messages survived from that period, some historian might think that the whole Empire perished, while it did not.

Cerberus

Hmm I see both are possible, /gɔd/ and /gɒd/?

tchrist

@CowperKettle I hate that you might be right.

Cerberus

@CowperKettle Such conclusions are not based only on written sources.

It will be a combination of various sources.

CowperKettle

Yes, I know: they use also a lot of achreological sources and now even DNA sequencing etc.

tchrist

@Cerberus Yes, but to me those are really just allophones. I know I sometimes produce one and sometimes the other, and that it doesn't sound right when I swap, but I can't pull out examples just right now.

Cerberus

02:38

Besides, you might be surprised what conclusion can be drawn from texts after all.

tchrist

@CowperKettle We have reasonable written continuity in Egypt and China, but nowhere else. And China was too far away for whatever happened in the Med and Western Asia.

Cerberus

Depends on what period you take, doesn't it?

tchrist

Think of Troy. That was before the Greek Dark Age.

And we have no actual written records from that city of its fall. Just the echoes in Homer from so many centuries later after writing was re-invented.

But Ancient Greece, the part we have histories of from then so like Pericles and Plato, still held marvels lost to us now. The lost age of Troy and such from before then is somehow forever cut off from our eyes now. Go ahead, just try to find proper records of Thera before it blew up.

> Although there are no clear ancient records of the eruption, its plume and volcanic lightning may have been described in the Egyptian Tempest Stele,[10] and the ensuing volcanic winter coincides with a cold wave mentioned in the Chinese Bamboo Annals.

Cerberus

Yes, there was no continuous written culture in Greece between Troy and Homer.

But there was written culture in that period outside Egypt, wasn't there?

tchrist

Yes. In China.

The Bronze Age Collapse wiped out all other literate cultures than Egypt and China alone.

Cerberus

02:48

Mesopotamia?

Some towns in Asia Minor that weren't pillaged?

But I think we have few written sources from Asia Minor anyway.

tchrist

The Assyrians made it through.

Late Bronze Age collapse

The Late Bronze Age collapse was a time of societal collapse preceding the Greek Dark Ages (from around 1100 BCE to the beginning of the Archaic age around 750 BCE). The collapse affected a large area covering much of Southeast Europe, West Asia and North Africa (comprising the overlapping regions of the Near East, the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa, with the Balkans, the Aegean, Anatolia, and the Caucasus). It was a transition which historians believe was violent, sudden, and culturally disruptive for some civilizations during the 12th century BCE, along with a sharp economic decline of...

Oh, I linked to the #Mesopotamia section.

Babylon fell.

> Assyria and its colonies were not threatened by the Sea Peoples who had ravaged Egypt and much of the East Mediterranean, and the Assyrians often conquered as far as Phoenicia and the East Mediterranean. However, after the death of Ashur-bel-kala in 1056 BCE, Assyria withdrew to areas close to its natural borders, encompassing what is today northern Iraq, north-east Syria, the fringes of north-west Iran, and south-eastern Turkey.

And, strangely, they perhaps did not write of Troy. :(

Which was a bit earlier still.

> Assyria still retained a stable monarchy, the best army in the world, and an efficient civil administration, enabling it to survive the Bronze Age Collapse intact. Assyrian written records remained numerous and the most consistent in the world during the period, and the Assyrians were still able to mount long range military campaigns in all directions when necessary.

Cerberus

Well, but that doesn't mean an end to writing in Mesopotamia, does it?

tchrist

Right.

Cerberus

Yes, exactly.

And perhaps Phoenicia also retained writing.

And possibly some other, smaller places.

tchrist

But they didn't tell us what the hell happened.

Cerberus

02:54

Sure.

tchrist

We have a little tiny bit. Not enough. The last video link I posted starts out with some of those that we've found.

Cerberus

But you suggested that there might be no continuity of writing outside Egypt.

One also wonders about India, but that might be irrelevant because too far away.

tchrist

Egypt remains. China remains. But where is Assyria today? It is no more.

Cerberus

Oh, you meant from 1200 BC to now?

tchrist

Egypt was completely changed by Alexander and Ptolemy, of course. For a little while.

Cerberus

02:56

Well, I doubt whether writing ever disappeared from Mesopotamia.

I should think it didn't.

tchrist

The Phoenicians came after the BAC.

> The Phoenicians came to prominence in the mid 12th century BC, following the decline of most influential cultures in the Late Bronze Age collapse.

Cerberus

I think places like Ugarit already had writing centuries earlier?

Perhaps not quite Phoenicia.

But I wouldn't be surprised if some writing happened on the East Coast during the worst of times? I don't know.

tchrist

@Cerberus Indeed. Which I had not known.

Cerberus

There is much we do not know about that time, as you said.

tchrist

We have their alphabet, the first one we know of, but I don't think almost any of their records survived.

> The Phoenicians were long considered a lost civilization due to the lack of indigenous written records, and only since the mid-20th century have historians and archaeologists been able to reveal a complex and influential civilization.[19] Their best known legacy is the world's oldest verified alphabet, which was transmitted across the Mediterranean and used to develop the Hebrew script, Arabic script, and Greek alphabet and in turn the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets.

We did decode Linear B. Linear A is still unsolved.

Cerberus

03:03

Yes, that is, the language behind the script is unsolved.

I think we know some stuff about the script?

Doesn't it resemble B in various ways?

tchrist

I think we think we've figured out the numbers.

I don't know much about it.

I know that the Mycenaeans from "Greece" conquered the Minoans on Crete. And that we don't really know what all was happening then.

Cerberus

> Linear B shares many symbols with Linear A, and they may notate similar syllabic values, but neither those nor any other proposed readings lead to a language that scholars can read. The only part of the script that can be read with any certainty is the signs for numbers

Indeed, we do not.

tchrist

And remember that something awful happened to cities in the Levant around the time that Thera blew up: pebbles of the gods, a cosmic event, a great explosion in the air near the Dead Sea. (The volcano and the asteroid weren't related. We think.)

Cerberus

Yes, problematic times.

tchrist

The Tall el-Hammam event.

Cerberus

03:16

Yeah it was in the news recently.

tchrist

Stuff like that leaves lasting cultural echoes longer than writing survives, although that one is probably the Old Testament bit.

Cerberus

tchrist

"Active volcanic arc" never sounds good.

Cerberus

No, indeed.

Or should that be, never, indeed?

tchrist

Yeah.

Or else Indeed not.

Cerberus

03:20

Right.

That's less emphatic, isn't it?

tchrist

Seems so.

I am just deeply, deeply frustrated and saddened that we have no written accounts of so much of our time on this world.

Cerberus

Yeah.

Then again, there is so much we have not.

And yet we have more than anyone ever had.

tchrist

I would read the diary of a man of ten thousand years ago, of fifty thousand years ago.

For we were men then.

We had language, culture, arts.

All lost.

Cerberus

Not wholly.

tchrist

The tales out the Dream Time from the Australian autochthons stretch back to another world.

But they are only oral, not written.

IF only we had written records of our contacts with other human species!!

Not just legends handed down from time out of mind of the little "hobbits" on Flores.

Cerberus