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1:29 AM
@Mitch And then there's the ever-popular mom-ism, "I said maybe and that's final!"
 
 
6 hours later…
8:08 AM
Because the fare was ridiculously high.
It would have bankrupted Germany to haul an army via the Tunnel.
 
 
2 hours later…
10:14 AM
What means cringe/cringy? Seeing it a lot on social media.
@CowperKettle 🤣
 
 
1 hour later…
11:29 AM
@Vikas something very embarrassing, often involving shallow online relationships.
 
11:43 AM
@M.A.R. Okay. So if something is cringe (like some photo or comment or text or a person), it would be embarrassing to us?
 
Is this sentence correct ?
How does the poet take to the open road.
It is Q from the poem : Song of the open road.
 
I noticed the poet has written here “I take to the open road”.
@Vikas K. Is it some kind of idiom?
 
@S.M.T If this is correct, the other one should also be correct. Just add a question mark
@S.M.T Actually I'm also not so good. Just figured it out from dictionary
How does the poet take to the open road?
Do you want to create a question?
@S.M.T Dictionary says it is idiom
 
In literal sense , if sb who didn’t know this idiom. He would think “ The Q is saying how does he take I.e What is the way he is taking sth , to the open road I.e What is the way he was taking that ‘sth’ to the open road”
It kind of sounds like this.
The answer is :Afoot & light hearted the poet take to the open road.
@Vikas I hope u got what I’m trying to say.
 
12:03 PM
@S.M.T What is something here?
I think it can have multiple answers. Like he was on vehicle or on foot. He was tired or energetic. Etc.
 
@Vikas This sth is according to the poem , afoot & light hearted
@Vikas Afoot means he was on foot
So , walking.
 
@S.M.T So according to that poem, answer to your question can be what you said. Right.
Yeah I guess it makes sense. But like I said I'm not native and not so proficient in English. Hope someone else here will reply.
 
@Vikas Yes. But the Q says how does he take & not what does he take.
 
@S.M.T Sure
 
@Vikas Yup. I’m Indian too buddy.
 
12:06 PM
@S.M.T So does it create any problem?
@S.M.T Good :D
 
@Vikas That way , Q is not totally answered right. It is incomplete.
 
@S.M.T Q = Poem?
Q = Question?
 
@Vikas Question
 
@S.M.T How is it incomplete? The question asks how he takes to the road? And not what.
 
@Vikas There was a person who lit up the candle at night with happiness.
 
12:09 PM
@Vikas it's often someone else that said something embarrassing, so you cringe (the dictionary definition) at what they said. Visible discomfort, you know, that sort of thing.
 
@S.M.T Yes
 
How does he lit up & what does he lit up ?
 
@S.M.T look up "take to something"
 
He lit up the candle is what & He lit up the candle with happiness is how. That’s what I think Q means.
 
Not just "take"
 
12:10 PM
@S.M.T He lit up candle with happiness. (How = with happiness, what = candle)
 
@M.A.R. K.
 
Mark? o_O
 
K. I’m getting it. Thanks for your help @Vikas
 
@S.M.T Does it solve your original problem?
 
@Vikas Yup.
I’ll ask on site too as a Q for more clarification.
 
12:44 PM
@S.M.T 👍🏼
 
 
3 hours later…
3:59 PM
Dec 21 '20 at 21:21, by Robusto
@MattE.Эллен: I'm informed that all Brits know the term "Colin the caterpillar cake." Is that true? I've never heard the term before.
 
@CowperKettle What you're paying for is a digitally unique serial number and a url that maybe resolves to a copy of some artwork. Since with digital files there's no such thing as an original or a unique file or a persistent, permanent object, it's only like owning actual artwork or collectibles in the same way that shooting people in video games is like shooting people in the real world.
 
4:23 PM
I think that art in exhibitions largely died when big business stepped in at the beginning of the 20 century.
For some reason, English poetry largely died at about the same time, in the first half of the 20 century.
Maybe there's some underground modern poetry that still has rhyme.
When I first tried to find English poetry in about 2000, I only had access to a couple of libraries in Yekaterinburg. I mean to books printed in English. And God, was that poetry crap. Total shit. For some time, I thought that the English language has no poetry.
Because in those libraries they had books of modern poetry, written without rhymes, and mostly whining about thir or that, or written as if under the influence of drugs.
Same with graphic art. When there's any kind of "art" expo in Yekaterinburg, it's meaningless blobs, blurbs and other vapid, empty stuff without any hint of art in it.
 
@CowperKettle examples?
 
Like "I'm a feminist and here's some picture of a wall with a window, and on top of that, some kind of distorted guitar shape as if painted with blood". OMG. I would rather go outside and enjoy some graffiti on the walls.
 
I read 2 days ago some people hate even Picasso's quick sketches. They say he did it only for money
 
Example. The exhibition is titled "Feminist Translocations". Yekaterinburg, fall of 2021.
The problem is that he probably did it to sell to businessmen who intended to keep it, then sell later for bigger money.
Such art is not art, it's business investment vehicle.
Here's the link to the feminist exhibition in Yekaterinburg
Is this art?
 
@CowperKettle 🤣
 
4:34 PM
I like the idea of feminists and LGBT, the more the better, because they make Putinites angry.
But I don't consider this art.
It's good to create art for money. If your wealthy patron intends to hang your picture in his kitchen and enjoy it while cooking or eating, or drinking wine. If he intends to put it under armed glass, and keep for subsequent selling, it's not art.
It he drinks wine and and cooks and makes your picture all dirty, fine. It's nice for art to die.
 
What do you think about this? instagram.com/p/CUeRCA-vGtE
 
@CowperKettle I came to know it's related to NFT. Now I'll study NFT :D
(Since everyone is talking about it)
 
> Mawmluh cave is one of the longest and deepest caves in India, and conditions here were suitable for preserving chemical signs of the transition in ages.
A cave in India led scientists to subdivide history into a new geological age in 2018.
In the geologic time scale, the Meghalayan is the latest age or uppermost stage of the Quaternary. It is also the upper, or latest, of three subdivisions of the Holocene epoch or series. It was officially ratified by the International Commission on Stratigraphy in June 2018 along with the earlier Greenlandian and Northgrippian ages/stages. Its Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) is a Krem Mawmluh Cave formation in Meghalaya, a state in Northeast India. Mawmluh cave is one of the longest and deepest caves in India, and conditions here were suitable for preserving chemical signs of...
 
4:49 PM
Meghalaya is in India
 
The 4.2-kiloyear BP aridification event was one of the most severe climatic events of the Holocene epoch. It defines the beginning of the current Meghalayan age in the Holocene epoch. Starting around 2200 BC, it probably lasted the entire 22nd century BC. It has been hypothesised to have caused the collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt as well as the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, and the Liangzhu culture in the lower Yangtze River area. The drought may also have initiated the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilisation, with some of its population moving southeastward to follow the movement of...
> A portion of an Indian stalagmite that defines the beginning of the Meghalayan Age
 
5:25 PM
@CowperKettle what sort of idiot glues gloves to his eyebrows
@CowperKettle yeah this was really puzzling to me. I used to wander from time to time "where are the modern English poets?" It always seemed like something that would never fall out of fashion or something
 
5:41 PM
Word of the day: responsive neurostimulation (implantable device sends signals to the hippocampus to prevent an epileptic seizure)
The implanted computer feels the approaching seizure, and heads it off by its own signals.
 
🤔😮
Is it a model or real man?
 
It has been used for years now.
A new study shows that tinkering with this implant may allow one to improve memorization of words. medicalxpress.com/news/2022-01-brain-memory-formation.html
 
The photo you shared is a real human?
 
It's from the Journal of Neurosurgery, 2019 thejns.org/view/journals/j-neurosurg/132/1/article-p225.xml
> The neurostimulators and leads were successfully implanted without adverse surgical outcomes. The patient recovered uneventfully, and the early therapy settings over several months resulted in preliminary decreases in aura and seizure frequency.
 
Hard to believe. Patient is still living?
 
5:48 PM
@Vikas which part is hard to believe?
Though I think some people might be disturbed by the imagery. @Cowp
 
@M.A.R. I read that Elon Musk plans to connect some device with brain maybe. So I thought things like this was never done yet.
 
Not that you can edit it now.
 
I mean how can you connect a device to biology. It has no inputs like a wire has. How would it even work.

Secondly, a proportion of his brain must be removed and he should die? Brain is complex structure and we don't know what part inside is meant for what and what is non important.
 
@M.A.R. Oh, Sorry!
 
@CowperKettle I had similar experience in one another room and the mods removed the picture. I also had apologized :P
 
5:51 PM
Facebook hid this image and placed a warning over it. But I find it beautiful.
 
Science student?
 
@Vikas never heard of prosthetic heart valves? I think what makes Musk's fantasies hard to believe is the synergy between the mechanical part and the living part in making thoughts. The dfference between an implanted pulse maker and a cyborg is the default assumption, that in the cyborg, both the mechanical parts and the living remains of the brain function as parts of a whole. They become one "me".
 
No. But it's interesting.
 
@M.A.R. I have heard experiments with heart maybe. Like they do bypass sugery and insert some devices inside heart. That still makes me believe because heart has some "pipes" where we can connect things :D
 
When my corneas were disintegrating due to keratoconus, I dreamed of having a direct connection from the computer to my visual cortex. Because reading was torture.
 
5:53 PM
@CowperKettle beautiful? It's worse than modern art
 
@CowperKettle First I thought it's a pomegranate
👍🏼
 
And anyway unless there's been some 80's CIA sort of crap going on behind everyone's backs, I think we're still very far away from making cyborgs.
We can't even make a damn kidney. And that one is actually all pipes.
 
@M.A.R. Oh yes, and it's important too
maybe they don't wanna make it on priority since we already have 2 :D
 
Well, some don't
 
5:56 PM
@M.A.R. yeah
 
Folks were venting on a Reddit post the other day about how 'Big Dialysis' actually keeps causing this sort of technology to keep getting delayed. Lack of funding, things like that.
Dunno how much meat there is to it
Where is Mitch when you want actual, relevant puns on an easy topic like organs?
 
I also think that big corporations are the bane of the modern world. They span the globe, they can quickly shape-shift, evading persecution and taxation. They are more powerful than some governments.
And corporations collect politicians into their camp.
In order to exert influence.
Rosneft is a huge Russian oil corporation operated by Putin's friends.
This is a very unflattering photo by the BBC.
Must be very painful for a woman to see herself in this photo.
I've been reading a twitter account of a Russian programmer who undergoes transition into a woman, and he/she underwent a painful surgery to make her nose more female-like.
And indeed after the nose operation the photos became cute.
 
6:54 PM
> me: I spy with my little eye... something... blue

other guy in the lifeboat: shut up
 
@Mitch buzzer sounds I'm sorry, you were tasked with producing a pun on organs.
 
:P
 
Not of the Hammond or church varieties, I presume.
 
The Terminal Man is a novel by American writer Michael Crichton. It is his second novel under his own name and his twelfth overall, and is about the dangers of mind control. It was published in April 1972, and also serialized in Playboy in March, April, and May 1972. In 1974, it was made into a film of the same name. == Plot summary == The events in the novel take place between March 9 and March 13, 1971. Harold Franklin "Harry" Benson, a computer scientist in his mid-thirties, is described as suffering from "psychomotor epilepsy" following a car crash two years earlier. He often has seiz...
 
Perhaps you don't have the stomach for making puns about organs?
 
6:58 PM
@Mitch I couldn't understand it
 
The usual Crichton technophobia (like Jurassic Park). Also, fear of implants is due to a lot of 'ick' factor. It's gross.
 
@Mitch Crichton is all about one phobia or another.
 
@Robusto Liver? I barely knew her!
 
1 min ago, by Robusto
Perhaps you don't have the stomach for making puns about organs?
Put another way, maybe you don't have the guts for that?
Or the spine?
I'm just ribbing you.
See, I have the heart for awful puns about organs.
Not that the spine or the ribs are organs, mind you.
But puns are like shotguns: a good weapon if you're not too fussy.
Every time I launch Garmin Express I get notified that there is a new version. Either I don't use it often enough or they update it too much.
 
Would a famous artwork be still popular if its original painter is not disclosed and told to public that it is drawn by maybe any average person like me?
 
7:12 PM
@Vikas Explainer of Puns: There's this game you play as kids called 'I Spy', usually on a long road trip with bored kids. One kid choose a thing in the car, doesn't say what it is, but says "I spy with my little eye..." (it rhymes, see?) "... I spy with my little eye something {the color of that thing}"
and then the other kids look around in the car and try to see a something with that color.
If one kid guesses right, that kid gets to be the next person to say "I Spy"
 
@Vikas No. Not by the standard definition of "popular" ...
 
Now in the joke, the first guy says "I spy someting blue"
and here is where the hilarity ensues....
you the reader don't know the context but they are in the ocean
 
@Mitch I had to adjust my hilarity scale down to micrograms for that one.
 
and the ocean, as we are all aware of, either through direct personal experience, or from schooling of general knowledge, is -very- blue
 
@Robusto Consider all drawings of Picasso/Leonardo. They are considered popular/famous (I mean appreciated by large audience and sold with huge price. I might have used wrong word)
 
7:14 PM
and there's a lot of it.
almost every thing in the ocean is blue
 
@Vikas Famous is maybe the better term.
 
So the other guy, the guy guessing can only see one thing blue. And so the only answer is 'the ocean'
now here is how it is even more funny.
 
@Robusto Yes. That's what I meant then.
 
they are going to die in the ocean because there are also sharks. and they are blue.
wait
 
@Vikas But yeah, once someone has achieved fame then their least works are more famous than the greatest works of an unknown.
 
7:15 PM
yes sharks are blue but you can't see them
well
of course you can see them but not until they're biting your face off.
 
I see sharks all the time.
 
but then all you see is mostly red
because you're angry that you got the question wrong
forget the sharks
 
Sharks are like shotguns: a good weapon if you're not too fussy.
 
but it would be funny if shark was the answer.
So that's the explanation.
 
@Robusto (I would like to continue this after deciphering Mitch's messages)
 
7:18 PM
@Vikas I have more messages if you'd like
 
@Vikas But I may not be around next year.
 
not about sharks
 
@Mitch No no. I'm reading one by one :D Not so great in English
 
@Vikas I will hold off messaging until you've finished all of them
 
@Robusto lol
 
7:19 PM
weil all the messages up until this one
or rather the last one
 
@Mitch You only tell the color in this game or it could be any other characteristics too?
 
@Vikas Hmm...
I think traditionally it is color, but I suppose if you had to you could choose some other visual feature like...
 
ok
 
like... I don't know... what are some other visual features that are not color?
shininess?
at that point of complexity, the family has moved on to twenty questions
I spy is a guessing game where one player (the spy or it) chooses an object within sight and announces to the other players that "I spy with my little eye, something beginning with...", naming the first letter of the object. Other players attempt to guess this object. It is often played as a car game. == Rules == One player is chosen to be the Spy, and they silently select an object that is visible to all the players. They do not announce their choice, and instead say, "I spy with my little eye something beginning with ...", naming the letter the chosen object starts with (e.g. "I spy wit...
something that "begins with ..." the letter naming th object.
That makes more sense.
so the joke is taking liberties with the rules.
 
I spy with my little eye ... something with sharp teeth and blood and viscera streaming from its mouth.
There's your shark intro.
 
7:25 PM
It's not funny though because there's a shark in it
 
It's funny if you keep looking directly behind the person you're playing with.
 
take the shark out and you have the start of a good one.
 
> Crichton stated that this was his least favorite work.
 
@Robusto after you push them in the water
 
@Mitch They tried taking out the shark in Jaws, but it kept coming back for sequels.
 
7:26 PM
@Mitch Did both persons had no clue of presence of sharks?
 
@CowperKettle Oh? It'd be weird to question his taste so I'll just say I agree with him, until I find a worse work in his oeuvre
 
@Mitch There was the one about Japan, or the one about nanobots, or ...
 
Congo and Sphere were worse
objectively speaking
 
@Robusto So isn't it a little unfair? My point was: I feel someone else in today's world can paint like Picasso's child like drawings (not all. consider two or three for example). But they won't be noticed at all. So isn't it unfair like calling Picasso's works as masterpieces and others nobody cares?
 
John Michael Crichton (; October 23, 1942 – November 4, 2008) was an American author and filmmaker. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and over a dozen have been adapted into films. His literary works are usually within the science fiction, techno-thriller, and medical fiction genres, and heavily feature technology. His novels often explore technology and failures of human interaction with it, especially resulting in catastrophes with biotechnology. Many of his novels have medical or scientific underpinnings, reflecting his medical training and scientific background. Crichton...
@Robusto He wrote the first Westworld, which of course was awesome
 
7:29 PM
@Mitch The guy who said I see blue meant sharks or ocean?
 
@Vikas Well, life is unfair.
 
@Vikas Picasso was the first one to do that, that's why he's famous
 
@Mitch The HBO version not so much.
 
@Vikas Ocean
forget the sharks
take the cannolli
 
@Mitch Ah. That makes sense. I won't doubt Picasso anymore :D
 
7:30 PM
@Robusto The first season I thought was excellent.
 
"Crichton became well known for attacking the science behind global warming. He testified on the subject before Congress in 2005." So apparently he wanted us to be afraid of everything except stuff we should actually fear.
 
@Mitch Okay, so both guys didn't know about sharks?
 
The second season was just extending the first season but complicating everything unnecessarily
 
@Mitch I thought it was tedious and unsustainable.
 
@Vikas I'm sorry I brought up sharks. They are not in anybody's mind when thinking about this joke
 
7:32 PM
@Mitch Oh. I will try to find out how is it funny. Just with ocean.
 
@Robusto Well, the second season proved you right. Each episode ended with "I don't get it why would that robot do that... OK benefit of the doubt it'll all come together eventually"
until it didn't
 
@Vikas Its humor is predicated on the fact that on the ocean, the sky and ocean are both (usually) blue, so that is too obvious to mention.
@Mitch A major problem with series like those. Lost, Game of Thrones, Dexter, you name it.
 
the third season was... well they were trying to follow the same themes but out in the real world (outside of the theme park) and there was just too much that was unbelievable.
 
Six Feet Under and Breaking Bad are exceptions, of course.
@Mitch The main problem is that they always hint at interesting complexities of character, but then never pay those off.
 
@Robusto They almost get lost in just trying to have more money making entries rather than making something good.
strike out 'almost'
 
7:36 PM
@Robusto Oh. So it's a simple joke, I tried to think too hard.
 
@Robusto With BB they wrapped it up nicely
 
But of course I liked the concept of sharks too.
 
@Vikas It's super simple, based on revealing the context at the very end
 
This is what made Breaking Bad so good. His character was interesting, and you hated Walter White even while you hoped he would beat the "bad guys" ... except you wanted him to get his comeuppance in spades somewhere down the line.
 
I think joke is not complete without sharks as they are also blue like Mitch said.
 
7:37 PM
@Vikas You never want to make that mistake with puns, or with @Mitch's jokes in general.
 
if everything is blue then the game is too simple to bother playing, and the second guy is angry (says 'shut up') because the first guy is just emphasizing the horrible circumstances.
 
yeah
 
@Vikas Nope. No sharks needed. everything is blue that they see. just the boring limitless expanse of the ocean. where they will probably die. It's dark humor.
 
I never dreamed we would have a critical exegesis of one of Mitch's jokes in chat.
 
@Mitch Makes sense.
 
7:39 PM
@Robusto For the record. It's not my joke, I just chose it. My jokes can barely be called that, if at all.
 
@Robusto Well credit to me. I am from India so often it becomes hard to relate some things :D
 
@Mitch Yours, as in you brought its bleeding carcass in here.
 
@Mitch I get it completely now!
But it's sad now I can't laugh.
 
:60264046 "other guy in the lifeboat": pointing out that they're in a lifeboat sets the context that they were perfectly comfortable on a regular ship that has probably sunk and it's only those two that are survivors.
You know what happened to everybody else on the ship?
 
@Mitch yes. Something like Titanic.
@Mitch Got it
 
7:42 PM
@Robusto You should get more sleep
 
Everybody else sunk.
 
so you can dream more
@Vikas Eaten by sharks
 
@Mitch or better dream within dream so you can sleep even less :D
 
@Mitch Always a wise policy.
 
@Vikas That is the tragedy of the comedy
Once it is explained it is not funny anymore
 
7:43 PM
yes
 
most of humor is the shock of realization
 
It's also like creating a meme. When you create it, you laugh in the process once it's ready you can't laugh.
 
@Mitch I don't think the explanation is necessarily the root cause of that ...
 
@Vikas Sell that idea to Christopher Nolan!
@Robusto I could attempt to explan a non-joke, but that would be even less funny
 
@Robusto it's mainly because it got delayed. Had I understood it in 1st place, I would also laugh
is Westworld worth watch?
 
7:45 PM
@Robusto The recent Westworld was written and directed by Jonathan Nolan, and was constantly thinking "Is he trying to be as clever as his brother"?
@Vikas Did I say it's not -that- funny?
It's not hilarious.
 
@Mitch Yeah, I hated it so much I quit after the first episode in that season.
 
What is it about in one sentence (no spoilers please)? I read IMDb summary I didn't get "indulge appetite"
 
It deserves maybe at most an expressionless half-snort.
 
@Mitch Right. You are right it's not a joke actually
 
@Mitch Have you guys gotten your Nor'easter yet?
 
7:47 PM
@Robusto OK man you didn't like Harry Potter either so maybe something is broken deep inside you?
 
@Mitch Indeed. My tolerance for crap has never been what you might call robust. Perhaps it just failed completely this time.
 
Like you got a double scoop of ice cream once when you ere like 8 years old, and before you could try some the top scoop fell off and you cried and cried and cried but they wouldn't give you another scoop to replace it.
@Robusto I'm sure one of the snows we've already had was called a noreaster, but we're expecting a big snow storm Saturday, so if you ask on Sunday I'll probably be able to say 'yes'
 
I'll keep that in mind.
My son lives in Watertown and he said there was one of those coming.
Do you realize there are eight Watertowns in the U.S.?
Maybe more popular than Springfield as a name?
 
@Robusto Not everything is perfect. You're right that HP has some problems. But ignore them and the story is just a lot of fun.
 
Meh, life is too short to spend it on crap.
 
7:52 PM
@Robusto I mean it's too easy. Have a little imagination.
@Robusto You do realize it is 'young adult' fiction.
 
The fiction I read as a child was adult fiction. I never went through that phase.
 
You don't watch kung fu movies for the scintillating dialog, character development, or plot continuity.
 
I don't watch them at all.
 
or really anything but cle
Oh
well there goes that line of reasoning
 
And now I have to go brave the cold. To be continued ...
 
7:55 PM
you mean like upper 50s?
hah ahaha haa
 
 
2 hours later…
10:21 PM
@Mitch Nah, it's only 40 °F today, believe it or not. It's been in the 50s, but yesterday it dipped with a cold front moving through. Gonna be cold into the weekend. Never mind, though, because winter is pretty much over by mid-February.
 

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