English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2022-01-20 (page 1 of 2)

« first day (4088 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (817 days later) »

12:01 AM

@Cerberus ok. That's what I'm telling you is way way off into the future and is not something to worry about. That is, if worrying about something would actually prevent it, and we only have a limited supply of 'worry', we shouldn't waste our limited supply of worry on omniscient omnifacient' AI because that is just a modern myth.

We should spend our 'worry' dollars on viruses and software errors and oh shit there's one that nobody has ARGHHHHHTGYFDRF

@Mitch Well, it doesn't have to be Skynet for AI to be used (and abused, and misused) in ways that increase the danger of nuclear war.

12:20 AM

@Mitch Well, I exaggerated with "omniscient".

But how far off is a strong AI really?

I mean, it's clearly not there.

By a long shot.

But how about in thirty years?

Thirty years ago, I had a black-and-white Game Boy and no Internet.

@Cerberus Yes, Phoceans as a demonym likely disappeared for a while. In ancient times, people of Marseille probably called themselves either in Greek Massaliotis (French Massaliotes) or Latin Massiliensis, eventually Marsilhès in occitan.

@jlliagre It might be interesting to know up to what time they did call themselves Phocaeans in Antiquity!

1 hour later…

1:38 AM

@Robusto some one said something like worrying about strong AI is like worrying about overpopulation on Mars

2:06 AM

@Cerberus that was understood

@Cerberus pretty far off

For example, purely by analogy, a goal of very weak AI is self driving cars. Not just the vision thing but also the decision making around human obstacles

In 2015 the news was wild about the advent of it, coming within a couple years.

@Mitch Yeah, we're not quite there.

All the manufacturers are making incremental progress. But really only Tesla has something working and that under the most circumscribed situation, highway driving in the best of weather (the absolute easiest)

But a truly self-learning programme could self-accelerate.

So there could be a tipping point.

@Mitch Actually, Google's algorisms are better than Tesla's.

Tesla just has more marketing.

Google's cars have been ahead since forever.

They bought some company, long ago.

Tesla is also less afraid to have its cars take risks.

For human-like cognition and intent, (which aren't actual things being worked on, but nevermind that), it's that much further in the future.

Certainly.

But how far is the tipping point? We have no idea.

2:15 AM

@Cerberus those words make sense but only in the imagination.

@Mitch Why?

I know what humanity has created thus far is not at all intelligent.

Whenever progress is announced, I look at it and sniff.

The technology we currently have for 'learning' (a very poor metaphorical use of the word for what the tech actually does) is simply pattern matching.

@Cerberus the whole 'singularity' idea is magical thinking by tech nerds.

@Mitch I know we have nothing yet.

@Mitch Why magical?

@Cerberus there is a case to be made that social groups have something that amounts to something that is similar to the intelligence of the individual.

@Cerberus empty of connection with reality

@Mitch Yes.

@Mitch But why?

Just because nowhere near there, doesn't mean we never will be.

2:23 AM

Has a logic of its own but entirely motivated by wishful thinking and faulty analogy with humans

@Cerberus sure

Do you think a numerical calculator is AI?

It seems like it shouldn't be called that, but mechanical calculators were at one time considered magical

In another direction, yeah I totally think that biological systems are deterministic and should be simulatable

But we are very far from understand enough of the science to simulate it.

So I agree 'eventually' but not any time soon

Years?

(there's not going to be a day where we say 'OK now we've got it)

@Mitch Only mechanical calculators are true AI.

@Mitch OK then I think we agree in principle!

Also intelligence is very under specified especially the strong AI human-like cognition

So I expect much longer than the usual '5-10 years'

user image

This is how not only human brains work but also calculators.

@Cerberus I think that's driving a lot of the magical thinking, that it's -possible- but that doesn't give a good path to how.

@Mitch Absolutely agree.

@Mitch I don't think there is a path yet.

But I think self-learning could be part of a path.

2:39 AM

@Cerberus haha

Bored homunculi.

@Cerberus currently what passes for 'learning' (= fancy statistics) can't get there.

@Mitch Agreed.

Things like Alphastar are awfully good at self-optimisation already, though.

What's Alphastar?

I think those game bots are the avant guarde of current progress.

Alpha star is a programme that can play the computer game of Star Craft against the best human players.

Alpha Go against human players of Go.

Made by Deep Mind, another company bought long ago by Google.

2:48 AM

Oh. Alpha Go was a real coup for AI. The game of Go was considered a holy grail of game playing. But it turns out that some engineering tricks did it well. And supposedly it's much more transferable, you can give it rules for other games and it'll work well

@Mitch That's what happened.

But the programme is not exactly given rules: it trains itself against other variations of itself, actually playing the game.

Stronger and stronger variants emerge.

Natural selection.

And Star Craft is a whole lot more complex than Go.

Of course it is still nothing like human intelligence.

But how smart does a programme need to be before it could become a threat to humans?

3:40 AM

@Cerberus hmm, I read somewhere that it doesn't, but I didn't care enough to confirm the veracity of the rebuttal. Now, according to Google, it does help vitamin D generation, but the rates of skin cancer are pretty alarming, nothing like "5% increased chance" or anything: skincancer.org/blog/…

@M.A.R. Yeah it's pretty bad.

Anyway, yeah, that was my point. A very narrow range of UV leads to vitamin D generation, and I think no equipment emits a narrow range of UV

There is absolutely no way that sun beds could be beneficial, nobody believes that.

@M.A.R. Ah, a narrow range, that's good to know.

Higher or lower frequency?

B or A?

@Cerberus shrug

@Cerberus B actually.

And most equipment, be it the disinfectant lamps in hospitals or tanning beds, emit UVA and UVB, very rarely UVC

@M.A.R. I just read about it on Wiki. So the more harmful kind of UV generates vitamin D, alas.

3:44 AM

DNA has absorption at around 265 nm. I dunno if that's close enough but the stats probably agree

But is the kind that generates vitamin D in the higher or lower frequency range of UVB?

@Cerberus Google says 290-300 nm

Hmm is that high?

Right in the middle, I think

A bit to the lower wavelength

OK.

That's potentially slightly beneficial, then?

We could use low-UVB tanning beds to help people make vitamin D.

Or...they could just ingest it?

3:47 AM

@Cerberus Proteins absorb at around 270 to 285 often

Water is invisible to UV

@Cerberus yeah, daily vit D requirements are pretty low, and we often store a lot of D if need be, the pills are cheap

And food that has vit D has other beneficial nutrients too

No reason to risk skin cancer for vitamin D

@M.A.R. What do you mean? Water does not block UV at all?

I think I was discussing this with Cowp a while ago, but IIRC the studies are inconclusive on how much vitamin D is harmful, but it's certainly not as benign as vitamin C and B group vitamins

@M.A.R. And ingested vitamin D can be used properly by our bodies?

@M.A.R. That is also good to know.

@Cerberus well it doesn't block visible light either. But far IR, for example, is absorbed by water.

Although I suspect the direct damage to DNA from sun beds is more dangerous than excessive production of vitamin D from sun beds...

@M.A.R. I praesume you mean it only blocks a relatively small proportion.

3:52 AM

It's probably less than a 50,000 IU pill

I don't know what that means.

Much less than glass?

I think glass lets through a fairly large proportion of UV?

@Cerberus well "blocking" is absorbing a certain frequency that causes some sort of change in the molecules of water (like making them vibrate faster, or making hydrogen atoms rotate, or the bonds stretch). If the frequency doesn't match, the rays just pass through.

Yes but I cannot imagine any visible frequency will pass through 100%.

@Cerberus it's hard to imagine because light around us is never monochromatic, it's a huge range of frequencies

Of course.

3:56 AM

But I do think single wavelengths of visible light would just pass through distilled water

Ah, pure water.

Unless I've forgot about some absorption, but probably not.

@Cerberus The impurities would absorb wavelengths of their own

Wouldn't there be a minute chance of a photon moving into the centre of a H or O atom in the water molecules?

I think water absorbs at 185 nm if I'm not mistaken, and that sort of energy breaks bonds and generates radicals or ions. Then there's nothing until around 2000 nm

@Cerberus I think it probably doesn't work like that, quantum is weird

I know it's weird, but still.

There is stuff in the way.

3:58 AM

Everything is probably fuzzy, never solid. But don't know enough to comment

I would not expect all light, the full 100%, to pass through, without even changing in direction or something.

Well, they do some very precise calculations in water, so such interference has to be very small.

Sure, it can be extremely small.

Like measuring nanograms of stuff that absorbs in 250 nm in a water solution

There are reference samples with pure water, so shrug

We shall have to build a tube filled with pure water of 10 km long.

And measure.

But now to bed.

Adieu!

4:28 AM

Night

2 hours later…

6:39 AM

The Texas dip is a form of elaborate curtsey and prostration performed in Texas during debutante balls. It involves the woman extending her arms completely to either side and lowering herself fully so that one knee touches the floor while simultaneously bowing her head to the side so that her left ear touches her lap. The Texas dip is believed to have originated in about 1909. == See also == Drum major backbend Kowtow debutante == References == == External links == video of a woman performing a Texas dip during the introduction of debutantes in Laredo, Texas

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in body, repeating characters in body (160): Adjective use after nouns: with and without that-clause ✏️‭ by Fridge‭ on english.SE

1 hour later…

8:01 AM

Blood sugar level follows perceived time rather than actual time in people with type 2 diabetes. Wait, what? pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27382161

Can I call the group of people in a study "investigational group", as opposed to "control group"? The investigational group is composed of kids with type I diabetes, the control group have no diabetes. There is no study drug; the study is dedicated to merely measuring the perception of time in the "investigational group".

I'm thinking of translating it as "studied group".

Had it been a drug trial, I would translate it as "trial arm".

1 hour later…

9:34 AM

Do you have fare collectors (persons) on your trams and buses? I mean city traffic.

There is an ongoing attempt to place automated computerized stations inside buses, so that you could print out a ticket by placing your credit card over the station.

As was expected, many people choose to free-ride when there is no person that collects fares on a particular bus.

So now we have buses where there's a fare collector going here and there just to check that everybody bought a ticket using the newly-installed ticket stations. These stations are small, maybe 15 by 30 centimeters, and are attached to bus handles here and there.

user image

They are called "validators" in Russian.

Here's a validator on a Yekaterinburg bus:

user image

Fare collectors, on the other hand, lug about a black bag for accepting your cash and giving you change.

And a smallish validator that prints out a ticket for you.

user image

I wonder whether there is a fare collector in any bus and tram in Europe.

If not, how they make sure that nobody is free-riding.

1 hour later…

10:58 AM

@CowperKettle yes

@CowperKettle preferably "study group"

Though I don't like either.

Though of course the most common phrase is "experimental group/subjects" @Cowp

Also "target variable", "target group", esp. when lots of stats are involved.

@CowperKettle we've got collectors and the equipment, but it's a card you use and later recharge with cash or credit.

That's a humongous waste of paper and it makes me sad :/

@CowperKettle wow, crazy stuff

So uh, if I think I'm eating healthy, I'll be healthier than if I think I'm eating unhealthy? The same food? Where does the glucose go? I'm assuming the absorption would be the same, so it's quickly turned into glycogen? How does that corroborate with existing glycogen in the hepatocytes, beta cells in pancreas etc.? So many questions

1 hour later…

12:26 PM

@M.A.R. Thank you!

@M.A.R. We also have a specialized plastic card for bus riders, produced by the city

The city of Perm decided to follow the example of Yekaterinburg, and issue its own bus/tram payment card, toppable with cash

They announced a competition for the design of the card, and launched an electronic vote online.

And the design that came first was

user image

(Permskaya Yezda) Пермская езда = Perm Drive

But there was one hitch.

They placed the letter P in a way that one could read the second word as Pezda, which is an obscene Russian word for the female reproductive organ.

The authorities had to stop the electronic vote, and selected a different winner.

12:48 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer, blacklisted website in answer, potentially bad ip for hostname in answer, potentially bad ns for domain in answer, potentially bad keyword in answer (184): Which one is correct is phrase?‭ by Sheira Smith‭ on english.SE

1 hour later…

1:54 PM

@Cerberus One of the advantages of the AlphaGo architecture was to have the game rules specified in a list and the game playing mechanism/move-choosing/optimizing algorithm to work on any rule set.

The classic DeepBlue chess machine that first beat Kasparov in 1995 had the chess rules too deeply embedded to change for other games.

But having a list of rules plus a strategy learning algorithm (learning from millions of self-played games) is no where near anything like human cognition. It's still "here's a game board, here's a specification of pieces and their moves, here's a decision of success'. That's not easily transferable to other parts of human cognition.

@CowperKettle Haha, I wondered about that placement when I read the sign.

@Cerberus To @Robusto's point, it doesn't have to be very smart at all, or have any intelligence. There's so much more to worry about with 'unintelligent' automation that can turn out bad.

@Mitch They also cheated by having a coterie of chess grandmasters vetting the moves.

@Robusto Really? I didn't know about that. Do you mean DeepBlue would suggest a move and the grandmasters would say 'let it pass' or 'try thinking of another one'?

@Mitch I'm not sure how it worked, but I understood that the team had to approve the moves.

2:06 PM

by 'let it pass' I mean 'Yes that's a good move, do it.'

Something like that, yes.

@Robusto That's supposedly the current (2020) best strategy, to have a machine and a human together.

But computers cheat anyway. They all have complete opening-book lookup, with each move weighted. One of the first strategies against computers was to get them off book.

They also have endgame hashtables.

How is that cheating?

No human would be allowed such a thing in a game, so why should a computer?

2:08 PM

That seems like just really good memory

Look, nobody thinks a human can beat a computer anymore. Not even a cheap, crummy one. Just as Usain Bolt couldn't beat a cheap dirtbike in the 100-meter dash.

@Mitch So you think humans should be able to consult opening books with weighted moves and endgame hash tables?

The AI engine Alpha Zero (and its offshoot, Leela) taught itself to play and doesn't rely on an opening book or (I think) endgame tables. And it crushed the best existing computers like child's play.

Alpha Zero taught itself to play chess in four hours.

The current best chess program combines Stockfish standard engine with a similar AI component.

> In December 2017, Stockfish 8 was used as a benchmark to test Google division DeepMind's AlphaZero, with each engine supported by different hardware. AlphaZero was trained through self-play for a total of nine hours, and reached Stockfish's level after just four

So the four was just to be able to play Stockfish.

Stockfish (chess)

Stockfish is a free and open-source chess engine, available for various desktop and mobile platforms. It is developed by Marco Costalba, Joona Kiiski, Gary Linscott, Tord Romstad, Stéphane Nicolet, Stefan Geschwentner, and Joost VandeVondele, with many contributions from a community of open-source developers.Stockfish is consistently ranked first or near the top of most chess-engine rating lists and is the strongest CPU chess engine in the world. It won the unofficial world computer chess championships in seasons 6 (2014), 9 (2016), 11 (2018), 12 (2018), 13 (2018), 14 (2019), 16 (2019), 18...

@Robusto I don't think memorizing openings or end games is cheating. The machine is a black box, so is the human. Are you saying it is cheating for the human to play a number of chess games and learn about whats a good opening and how to deal with different endings? Because the human is remembering all that info, just not as much as the machine.

AlphaGo is remembering the quality of all those different openings and endgames by playing, how is it cheating to have them written out and encoded for the machine to use?

Sure, I see that it is an advantage to have them listed out/precomputed as it were, but it's not cheating.

anymore than an internal combustion engine is cheating.

In other news:

> my pot dealer and helium supplier speak very highly of each other

2:55 PM

@Mitch Well, there are different rules for each. If you read the article about Stockfish, there's a section where it played a match against Hikaru Nakamura without those advantages. It still won, but only because Nakamura pressed for a win instead of settling for a draw.

3:06 PM

@Mitch BTW, no human could memorize openings to the depth a computer can. We are talking about literally millions of variations.

The dirt-bike/Usain Bolt comparison is apt here. Machines can beat humans, end of story.

3:37 PM

user image

Someone has not touched his car for a while

Nice layering.

@Mitch Yes, it is nothing like human intelligence.

But that isn't needed, is it?

@Mitch Perhaps the word 'intelligent' requires definition, which is what my point was.

A programme only needs to be able to carry out a smart war against humanity, not think like a human.

Although certain thing will be very difficult without thinking like a human, such as understanding human language.

I got 150 meters of elevation gain on my 1 hour run.

I've noticed that the gain generally amounts to 150-170 meters per hour.

There are no very steep hills in Yekaterinburg.

I was told that the fastest 5 km runner in Yekaterinburg is training himself by running uphill.

@Robusto Exactly. That's why I contend it is not cheating. Of course in the chess playing community the situation may be different, that is, a human using an end game book (without the knowledge or similar use by the opponent) might be considered cheating. But if your opponent is a machine (and its success is replicable) then anything it does is not cheating. Otherwise the fact that it is using silicon to remember things so much more reliably than grey matter would also be cheating.

@CowperKettle Train on ladders.

@Mitch I do a run on the staircase in my building after a run.

I go to the 9th floor and back a couple of times

@CowperKettle Running up stairs is the only I can imagine if you live in a flat area

Wait... -after- a run? When you're already tired?

impressive

3:50 PM

yes

just hearing that makes me want to take a nap

Today I ran 12 km and gained 150 meters, then went to the store to buy some bread, mineral water and toilet paper, and then took this all to the 9th floor and back and then again.

I'm curious whether uphill running will really allow me to ever reach a run of 5 km over 20 minutes.

@Cerberus Sure there's a big difference between results and simulation.

Thus far, my best was about 22 minutes for 5 km.

@CowperKettle I can easily beat you if the goal is to do it -over- 20 minutes

3:53 PM

Found it: it was 5 km in 21:57, in August 2018, my best and fastest 5 km run ever. And there are people who regularly run it in 20 minutes.

nice

but yeah, running up stairs, or having a back pack full of weights

I've heard that ankle weights are not good for your hips.

I saw some guys running with backpacks.

I thought of buying a special kind of ultra-light half-backpack-sling for runners, only big enough to carry a bottle of water.

Because running in July, you really get very thirsty.

2022 01 17 #УМКА Не волнуйся мама, ничего не будет хорошо

A blues song I recorded on Monday in a local bar.

"Don't worry mother, nothing will be allright"

"Не волнуйся, мама, ничего не будет хорошо"

By Anna Gerasimova, a translator and singer/songwriter

As always, she did not charge a penny for her performance, but asked everybody to donate as much as they would find comfortable.

@Mitch Isn't that a different point?

Alphastar defeated the best human players in Starcraft, I believe.

And Starcraft is a real-time game, with an infinite number of choices, and with lots of hidden information.

I wonder how soon AI will start writing and performing top-quality blues songs.

And the computer's clicks per second were limited to that of a human.

4:12 PM

@Cerberus "smart war against humanity" = getting results, "not think like a human." = simulation of human cognition

DeepBlue got results by beating a human at chess, not by simulating human thought but by managing game trees with alpha -beta pruning, and using superfast computers.

At any rate, I don't think this focus on human thought is beneficial.

It should be about how this intelligence could harm us.

Nobody is deploying chess-playing derived algorithms to strategize how exactly to invade the Grand Duchy of Fenwick...

Hey everyone! Glad to meet you all! We can talk about anything!

Starcraft seems like a fun game! Kids like us should enjoy it!

4:38 PM

Life has taught me two important lessons. I forgot the first lesson, but the second lesson is: you should always write down all important lessons.

4:53 PM

@Mitch ...this would seem to be irrelevant.

@Mitch I had fun with Starcraft I as a child.

@Cerberus It seems to me to be exactly what you're suggesting, that we should all be in terror of using AI algorithms (like the chess playing machines or the Starcraft machines, just repurposed) to engage in real world situations like military or financial attacks or otherwise disrupting people's lives.

@Mitch Then you must have completely misunderstood.

Alas, such things happen.

Can you then explain what you meant?

To the best of people and dogs.

Starcraft was just an example of what progress there is.

Dogs know exactly what is going on. They're just being polite when they don't point out other's mistakes.

4:58 PM

It is the farthest progress I have heard of, thus far.

5:25 PM

@Cerberus Yes, both Russia and the USA have nuclear submarines capable of running for years.

And Russia surely has some nukes stashed away in Siberia, where it's hard to detect them.

You can't bomb all of Siberia.

@CowperKettle Besides, the silos will be placed such that they cannot be destroyed by bombs.

And the same applies to America.

And probably various other nuclear powers.

24 hours ago, by Robusto

Putin has recently threatened to put hypersonic nukes 5 minutes away from Washington, D.C.

Putin's only goal is to die peacefully in his own bed, and not a prison bed.

He will threaten, roll on the floor in rage, spit and swear, pose as a heroic restorer of the USSR, all for this sweet goal.

Let him place rockets in Venezuela, if he wishes so.

THe next change of power in Russia will lead to their removal.

6:22 PM

@CowperKettle Can we be sure?

What if chaos breaks out after Putin's end?

And some maniac grabs power?

6:39 PM

Then you can blame me. You can even copy the permalink to my message to explain your decisions to the survivors of the global nuclear war.

It's that simple.

6:50 PM

@Cerberus s/some maniac/some other maniac/

@CowperKettle But yeah, to @Cerberus's point, I have no data that shows the who the next guy could possibly be and no idea if they'd remove nukes. What leads you to think that?

@Mitch Putin is not crazy.

I mean, of course, in some ways he is.

But not in the way of throwing around atomics or starting a war that will destroy Russia.

I can see no solution. No country on Earth is strong enough to police the whole Earth. And those that are strong, like the USA, China, India, and Russia, have a tarnished moral record, to a different degree. Like Guantanamo / Invasion of Iraq, Gulag / Eastern Bloc / Invasion of Ukraine, and Chinese concentration camps for Uighurs. So of any country tries to become a policeman, the others will use its moral drawbacks to prejudice people against that country.

And how to set rules without one policeman?

We're actually in a better situation than in most other centuries.

No threat of a great war.

2 hours later…

8:49 PM

Hi guys. I have a question.

Suppose I am your boss. I make a mistake in office today. Then 5 days later I make another similar mistake.

1 week later, one employee tells to other employee: Our boss made two mistake in [one week] / [a week] / [a single week] / [over the week].

Which of those 4 phrase should I use?

Basically, I want to put emphasis that he made 2 mistakes too quickly, i.e., within only 7 days!

@Vikas In one week / in a single week / in the same week are the most emphatic.

There is little difference between them, in this situation.

> two mistakeS

9:30 PM

Other high scorers are melt-in-your-hand aluminum-destroying gallium and tritium-powered glowsticks. Lawn darts are toward the other end.

@Cerberus It's very hard to keep up with phone models these days

@CowperKettle Eh, don't Russian leaders have a tendency to grow a conscience in their deathbed?

Lenin be like "oh noes I killed a couple million people, whoopsie daisy"

@CowperKettle Haha that's probably intentional

Gotta be

@M.A.R. Uhh what?

@Cerberus Oh just a lame joke. You know how every other phone is called "X model S" instead of "X"? E.g. iPhone 6S

@M.A.R. *on

@M.A.R. Oh, I was not aware of that.

My phone is a 3a.

9:49 PM

@M.A.R. When I was a kid shoe stores had fluoroscopes in them that would show you how your shoes fit by x-raying your feet with the shoes on. A different world.

@Robusto That late??

@Robusto That sounds like it would be awfully scary for customers, but the real victims are the employees who are using that over and over again.

@Cerberus This was when I was four or five, in the mid-50s.

@Robusto OK I thought it was pre-War.

@Mitch My sister got radium treatments when she was a baby to remove a birthmark on her cheek. The treatments got rid of the birthmark but left a scar.

@Cerberus Geezis, how old do you think I am?

9:54 PM

@M.A.R. Alt text:Other high scorers are melt-in-your-hand aluminum-destroying gallium and tritium-powered glowsticks. Lawn darts are toward the other end.

Also on the other end are trampolines, skateboards, and slip-and-slides (spinal cord injuries)

@Robusto Think of it as a compliment?

said the bishop to the actress

@Robusto That's why I was surprised, eh.

@Robusto there's the scene in Sleeper where in the future they realize that eggs and bacon are really good for you.

Well, that's already come true. At least the eggs part.

i realized that after I submitted

but they can't be -that- good. They're still high in cholesterol?

We used to eat margarine because butter had saturated fats. Then lately we find out that trans fats in margarine are way worse.

@Mitch It turns out that your body makes more cholesterol than you can eat. A few eggs aren't going to do you harm.

10:00 PM

Studies have shown that a Big Mac, large fries, and regular coke every day has a lower incidence of Alzheimer's

But there are different kinds of cholesterol, good and bad, right?

Because you die way before you can even think of having Alzheimer's

Nice.

@Cerberus Yeah. lf you have a high HDL score relative to LDL, the total score doesn't matter as much.

That's why the importance of statistics can never be underestimated.

@Robusto Noted.

10:02 PM

There is a kind of health care paradox, that stopping smoking increases health care costs, because people live much longer incurring more costs over those extra years

But I'm now thinner than I've been in a very long time, so I don't care!

Have an omelette

@Mitch I think that was a bit of a myth?

My overall cholesterol was 140 last time I got tested, and the HDL portion was nearly half of that. So my arteries appear to be in good shape.

Because smokers also get other, non-lethal diseases first?

10:03 PM

@Cerberus I'm not sure. I'm saying I know anyting, just a rumor I'm spreading

@Robusto The cycling might help?

@Cerberus Absolutely.

@Mitch The more rumours, the better.

@Cerberus Did you hear about Princess Meghan?

By the way, I have now discovered that one of my friends is unvaccinated, the first one I know of.

For medical reasons, she says.

10:04 PM

oh that sounds like a bad joke coming up. I don't have one. Also, isn't she not a princess anymore?

@Mitch I know nothing about princesses.

@Mitch My younger son, who is a scientist working on cancer research, says you aren't really cured of cancer until you die of something else.

Some Saudi girl?

@Cerberus It would be very concerning if it were for religious reasons

I hardly know any religious people, certainly no orthodox ones.

10:05 PM

@Cerberus C'mon man. Wikipedia is practically staring you in the face with info about princesses

Does this face look bovvered?

Am I bovvered?

@Robusto Nice!

@Cerberus Do you really want me to answer that?

@Cerberus Now you're a Cockney doggie?

The Catherine Tate Show-Lauren Cooper Periodic Table

"I am a science teacher"

10:10 PM

In case that wasn't clear.

youtube.com/watch?v=rYQgy8QDEBI#t=9m25s And so, you find that crypto prices and quite heavily speculative. They're tied to the new cycle. (what does that actually mean?)

@MichaelRybkin They're tied to the news cycle, not the new cycle.

@Robusto Thank you. What does that then mean?

Do you know what news is?

10:26 PM

yep

> A complete news cycle consists of the media reporting on some event, followed by the media reporting on public and other reactions to the earlier reports. The advent of 24-hour cable and satellite television news channels and, in more recent times, of news sources on the World Wide Web (including blogs), considerably shortened this process.

Thank you a lot.

What is your native language?

Russian

10:43 PM

@Mitch That doesn't sound right, although hmm

I mean, in today's world sedentary lifestyles make up for smoking.

Though not quite as much

And something I can't grasp is this culture of drinking alcohol

@Robusto Mine never get lower than 190 :/

@M.A.R. Yeast cultures are difficult to grasp.

Too small and slimy.

@Cowp's total cholesterol also tends to be high, I think.

@Cerberus bah dum tsss

I have no idea what yeast cultures look like, actually. In the lab, I mean. My mycology course was . . . stunted.

Nor I.

My knowledge of mycology is somewhat mouldy.

@M.A.R. That's why I called it a paradox. I don't see how it makes sense though. A doctor told me so maybe I'm misremembering or remembered badly or something.

@Cerberus Stop

OK keep going.

@Mitch You needed some time?

« first day (4088 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (817 days later) »

Transcript for

Jan '2220

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…

Not for the faint of heart or those easily triggered by Englis...

phrase-requests pronunciation single-word-requests synonyms

join this room
about this room

00:00

06:00

12:00

18:00

all times are UTC

site design / logo © 2024 Stack Exchange Inc; legal

mobile