English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

tchrist

03:00

> North American red foxes are generally lightly built, with comparatively long bodies for their mass and have a high degree of sexual dimorphism. British red foxes are heavily built, but short, while continental European red foxes are closer to the general average among red fox populations.

Our red foxes are usually in the 8-12 pound range, but yours can be thrice that.

I know that my elderly neighbor lady is nervous about our foxes when walking her little tiny bichon frise doggy, but they don't really scare most people here. Not that I recommend cornering them, mind you. Or any other creature.

Cerberus

Thrice, even.

tchrist

Look at the subspecies expansion at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_fox#Subspecies

We "pretty" frequently get alternate color morphs of Vulpes vulpes beyond the standard red, usually the grey one (which is mixed "red" and grey) and the dark charcoal one. You never mistake them for the actual Grey Fox even at a glance though because they still have the white flash at the end of the tail.

Cerberus

So many different dogs.

I don't remember seeing a fox live.

Perhaps I have, not sure.

tchrist

Wait, what, really?

Cerberus

Boyfriend's boss had young ones in his garden, I think last year or the year before.

tchrist

03:12

SO CUTE!!

Cerberus

Foxes are shy here.

Very cute. I can't find the picture.

tchrist

They're shy everywhere.

Cerberus

They work the nightshift, too.

tchrist

They're slight creatures, and must take care.

May 11, 2013 at 16:29, by Cerberus

Look, if you were a fox, would you really want to attack a cat?

May 11, 2013 at 16:30, by tchrist

A fox is 8–10 pounds.

May 11, 2013 at 16:32, by tchrist

> Do foxes attack cats? As a generalization the answer is no. The cat is a very fast and very skilled hunter, while a fox is more comparable to a dog in speed and agility, and a healthy cat has very sharp claws A fox might have a go at a young kitten or a sick cat, but it is probably a fact that more young foxes are killed by cats, than cats are killed by foxes.

When I said "a fox is 8–10 pounds" I was still unaware that Britain and the Continent have rather larger ones.

May 11, 2013 at 16:34, by Andrew Leach

Urban foxes are not afraid of humans.

Well, and then there's that.

May 11, 2013 at 16:35, by Johan Larsson

@KitFox do you kill cats?

Jun 17, 2014 at 17:06, by tchrist

@Cerberus That was one of our black foxes, right at my back garden's fence line. Notice the white tuft on the tail.

Which means it's still V. vulpes.

That is, still a "red" fox.

Just a melanistic specimen.

Cerberus

Nice colour.

Are those rare?

tchrist

03:24

Not terribly, no.

Often you'll get one or two in every larger litter of kits around here.

But probably the local population has a strong genetic thread running through them. It asserts itself more often here around my house than I'm used to seeing in other places.

@Cerberus Oh, in the UK yes they are rare!

Cerberus

I had only heard of red or grey foxes.

tchrist

> The vast majority of foxes in the UK are red in colour, but black (melanistic) and white (leucistic and albino) foxes are occasionally spotted from time to time. Foxes with white patches (piebald foxes) are relatively common in comparison, especially in urban areas.

The frequency of black foxes seen in the UK has been historically low and such sightings appear far less frequently than in other areas of the world (less than 0.1% of the population, by our records). For this reason, black foxes have been a thing of myth and folklore within the UK.

> This is a stark contrast to what is seen in Canada and North America, where the North American red fox displays a greater degree of coat variation and is included as part of the rich cultural heritage of the native peoples and early settlers. The North American red fox occurs in three common colours or "phenotypes" which are naturally present in statistically predictable frequencies; red (approx. 51-75%), cross (approx. 22-41%) and silver (approx. 2-8%).

So that would be a very dark "silver" I guess. Hm.

There ya go.

Mine was the "dark silver", so bottom row, second from the end.

So 21-41% of ours are of the "cross" coloration set.

It's very different in England. I don't know about Europe.

Only the one WITHOUT the white tuft is considered rare, the bottomost one farthest right.

Cerberus

White regions are common, I think.

They are common in art.

tchrist

Source

@Cerberus Well, arctic foxes are white. They are smaller than red foxes that white, though.

The arctic fox is still a fox in the vulpine sense: Vulpes lagopus.

The arboreal American grey fox is not.

Our tree-climbing grey fox is Urocyon cinereoargenteus, so not at all vulpine.

Cerberus

I meant red foxes with white regions in their fur.

tchrist

03:34

ah

In their "bibs", yes.

Like Lorin.

Cerberus

I didn't want to say patches, because they would be neat, specific regions, like neck or tail tip.

Yes, bibs.

tchrist

White-throated foxes may be more common than not.

Cerberus

Yes, like many cats; but many other cats do have irregular patches, unlike any foxes I have ever seen.

tchrist

> Hybrids between the North American red fox and the European red fox are possible, as they are both Vulpes vulpes. Hybrids between the Red fox and the Arctic fox, have also been recorded within both wild and captive bred populations, but those reported in the wild are thought to be escaped farm stock, given the complex artificial semination techniques required to produce such a hybrid on fur farms.

That one from North America has only a bit of white around the face and at the tail tuft.

It's captioned as a feral North American hybrid, but I presume the cross is with the European version in which the grey morphs run more common than here. I've certainly seen plenty like that, albeit with a bit more "red".

Cerberus

Wow.

tchrist

03:40

> Though it is interesting to note that the North American red fox and the European red fox were once classified as two separate species; vulpes vulpes in Eurasia and vulpes fulva in the America's (Tesky, 1995), being considered a singular species since 1959 (based on anecdotal reports).

Modern technology however, has recently provided evidence that our original assumption on species divergence may have been correct, detecting two distinct red fox lineages that were isolated from each other during the last glaciation.

> The increase of unusually coloured foxes seen in the UK fox population coincides with the keeping of foxes as exotic pets and animal ambassadors. While anomalous coat colours do occur naturally, some do not and are a product of domestication processes.

I am saddened that you have never seen a live fox.

I have seen them hundreds and hundreds of times, in all sizes, shapes, and colors. I've had a whole litter of little kits running in circles in the grass around me and jumping over my legs as I took their pictures.

They were so so so much fun.

And I've often seen them at extreme close range, just a few feet from me.

Cerberus

@tchrist I may have, but I don't remember.

tchrist

They are beautiful creatures.

Cerberus

@tchrist It would seem that foxes are far shier here.

tchrist

Ours are shy enough. It's just that over the course of a long lifetime spent outdoors, I've come upon them far more times than I can possibly count. And in a few unusual cases, they were not terrified of me.

I mistook one sitting on the stone wall just a few yards away from where I'm sitting now for Lorin late one night because it's exactly where he usually sits.

It was dark, and the color was close enough to being the same. But of course, the fox is much longer than Lorin is.

The fox came for some birdseed I'd laid out atop the wall because it was winter and I felt sorry for the creatures.

That was this past winter.

When I stood at the backdoor regarding him, he became nervous and slinked away.

Cerberus

Slinked or slunk?

tchrist

03:52

Slinked.

It wasn't a skunk! :)

What the heck!

Apparently it's slunk not slinked.

You were right.

Did you know that because it's also a strong verb in Dutch?

> slink (third-person singular simple present slinks, present participle slinking, simple past and past participle slunk or slinked or slank)

Oh one of THOSE verbs where nobody can make up their mind.

> From Middle English slynken, sclynken, from Old English slincan (“to creep; crawl”), from Proto-Germanic *slinkaną (“to creep; crawl”), from Proto-Indo-European *sleng-, *slenk- (“to turn; wind; twist”), from Proto-Indo-European *sel- (“to sneak; crawl”). Cognate with West Frisian slinke, Dutch slinken (“to shrink; shrivel”), Low German slinken, Swedish slinka (“to glide”). Compare also German schleichen (“to slink”). More at sleek.

Looks like.

Apparently Dutch has slonk in the past tense.

But it doesn't mean the same vulpinely furtive thing there.

"furtive"; why are foxes always thought of as thieves?

Cerberus

@tchrist I cannot really think of a related verb in Dutch.

tchrist

slinken

Verb: slinken

(intransitive) to shrink, to lessen, to decrease
slinken
to cave, to collapse inwards (especially of the body)

Cerberus

Oh, right, slinken!

tchrist

But it doesn't mean slink in the sneaky sense.

Cerberus

I hadn't thought of that.

We do have slinks, which means sneaky.

tchrist

03:59

Oh.

And the past tense is slonk, right?

Cerberus

Yes, I think so.

Slinken, slonk, geslonken.

We also have slank, which means err.

tchrist

See, we don't use some of these strong verbs often enough for them to be firm in our minds.

Cerberus

Thin, for a person or animal, in a good, elegant sense.

@tchrist I needed to think about it, too, in Dutch.

tchrist

That's "slender".

Cerberus

But, in English, I would always say slunk.

tchrist

04:01

Apparently that's the preferred form.

Cerberus

Yes, slender is exactly right.

Except that slender is not as positive as slank.

tchrist

No?

Slender seems positive to me.

Cerberus

When you call a man slender, is that always a compliment?

tchrist

Yes.

Skinny would be otherwise.

Cerberus

I would say it is more about body type than about fat?

tchrist

04:03

Maybe?

Our foxes are more slender than the Brits'.

Cerberus

Whereas, in Dutch, slank for a person really means, with exactly the optimal (= low) amount of fat on his body.

tchrist

We took our word from you!

Cerberus

@tchrist Would you say a slender fox is as positive a description as an elegant fox?

tchrist

> From Middle English slendre, sclendre, from Old French esclendre (“thin, slender”), from Old Dutch slinder (“thin, lank”)

@Cerberus Yes.

Cerberus

I see.

tchrist

04:05

But lank and thin might not be positive.

Skinny isn't.

Lank is ok.

It's the difference between flaco (skinny) and delgado (slender) in Spanish.

One is negative, the other positive.

And there is an elegance to slender.

Cerberus

I bet you won't get this in English for slender...

tchrist

Seems the same to me.

Cerberus

Heh maybe the average American man just looks different.

To me, the words really have a different feel to them.

Not always.

In various context, they might be used in the same way.

tchrist

I have semantic satiety.

Cerberus

I do see thinner men in your results btw.

tchrist

04:11

Mayhap.

Go ahead and google up images of "slender young man" and see if you get a substantially different selection.

You can't google "slender man" because of some dumb teenager horror movie.

Cerberus

I noticed.

I think perhaps slim is a better translation.

Or perhaps there are regional differences?

This suggests there may be something regional going on.

tchrist

Oh?

Wait right, yes slim.

I forgot that one.

slim and slender do feel a bit different.

There's more elegance to slender.

Cerberus

Yeah.

tchrist

But slim is also positive.

Cerberus

It's very hard to describe.

tchrist

04:17

No porn in this chat. :)

Cerberus

No more picturs, then.

tchrist

Yeah, it was already getting to me.

Better that than pictures of new atrocities in Ukraine. But still.

> By the way, we talked today with our military in Mariupol, with our heroes who defend this city, in Russian,” said the president, himself a native Russian speaker.

“Because there is no language problem in Ukraine and there never was.

But now you, the Russian occupiers, are creating this problem. You are doing everything to make our people stop speaking Russian themselves. Because the Russian language will be associated with you. Only with you.

I should go to bed.

> Russia itself is doing everything to ensure that de-russification takes place on the territory of our state. You are doing it. In one generation. And forever. This is another manifestation of your suicide policy.”

Derussification.

I guess that's the flip side of the fictive denazification.

Anyone who believes that Ukraine is actually a nation is a nationalist and hence Nazi to Putin.

Cerberus

@tchrist Yes, Putin has created a strong hatred of his country in Ukraine, of course.

tchrist

It all seems so unhinged to us.

Cerberus

It would have seemed less unhinged had Western and Russian predictions before the invasion come true...

tchrist

04:24

@Cerberus Why would he want to do that though? So strange.

Even with a "surgical decapitation" they would still have hated Russia.

Cerberus

Much less so, I believe.

tchrist

With all these war crimes, they will never forget nor forgive.

Cerberus

If Zelensky had fled and the Russians had taken Kiev without any significant shelling.

Yes, it is the shelling of non-military targets, especially houses, that created the most hatred.

And rightly so, I would be inclined to think.

tchrist

He sure does set a very high bar for other comedians to live up to.

@Cerberus Yes.

Cerberus

I think what is unhinged is the shelling of cities once it became clear that Ukraine would not fall quickly.

tchrist

04:28

The respective language of Putin and Zelensky couldn't be more different.

@Cerberus Murder. Mass murder.

Cerberus

And it won't work.

As it has been shown before many times.

tchrist

Putin speaks in degrading language, Zelinsky in elevating language.

Cerberus

It may work when you are overwhelmingly more powerful than your opponent, and when you can completely destroy his people.

As in Aleppo, Grozny.

tchrist

Whom you've called your own.

Cerberus

Yes, it will not work in Ukraine for several reasons.

tchrist

04:31

Here's another amusing language-related Vlad quote like the previous one, where Vlad is our protagonist.

> “None of this is what you returned here for, Vlad.”

“Yeah.” Eventually I managed, “Something has come up.”

“Oh? Tell me.”

“I’m not certain I can.”

She nodded. “The Northwestern tongue — that is, what we are at present speaking — is a head-last uninflected language, not perfectly capable of expressing all the nuances of emotion and familial connection that, for example, Seriolaa is; yet it can express fine distinctions in its own right, and, with time, a skilled speaker can usually convey the sense of his intention.”

I don't know that anybody's done as much harm to the Vlad franchise as Putin has since Count Dracula. :)

Cerberus

Alas.

tchrist

> In a possible shift on a plan to transfer Soviet-era fighter jets from Poland to Kyiv to boost Ukraine’s firepower in the skies - rejected earlier this month by the Pentagon as too not “tenable” - Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, says the US no longer objects, according to AFP.

“As far as we can conclude, the ball is now on the Polish side,” Kuleba said in written comments to the newswire after a meeting with US president Joe Biden in Warsaw.

These things are not done publicly. So the publicity is something else altogether. And I don't know what.

Cerberus

From what I hear, those planes are not expected to make much of a difference?

tchrist

Yeah.

Cerberus

Yes, these things should never have been discussed in public.

tchrist

04:37

The Ukrainian foreign and defence ministers actually left Ukraine to meet with Biden and their counterparts face to face in Poland during an ongoing war in their country.

I like what Kasparov said about the Biden ad-lib.

Biden said the quiet part out loud and caught massive flack for it. But it's simply the truth.

Cerberus

But we do not want Putin to feel cornered.

tchrist

What's his path out of this?

Cerberus

We want him to feel that the West is really no threat to his régime as long as he does no extreme things.

tchrist

This is extreme.

Cerberus

Yes.

So, if he stops this war, NATO will not try to oust him.

As opposed to: Putin must be ousted, period.

Give him something to lose.

And a way out.

tchrist

04:44

Is "If he stops the war, NATO won't try to oust him" the same as "NATO will try to oust him if he doesn't stop the war"?

Cerberus

It's interesting how appropriate Semantle's word of the day is to our discussion here: i.imgur.com/HYVmyNn.png

@tchrist Not exactly: we don't want to feed his paranoia in any case.

tchrist

Those are hardly selected randomly.

Cerberus

Perhaps not!

Yesterday's word was "nod".

I think it was "coöperate" the day before.

I'm trying to think of more synonyms for today's word.

tchrist

Every time he says something that works out to "If you don't give me Ukraine, I will destroy the world!" my mind gets some sort of divide-by-zero error and crashes.

Cerberus

Yeah, we don't want to make him too angry, if possible.

tchrist

04:47

For him, not taking Ukraine is an existential threat to Russia's existence.

And he says he's allowed to destroy the entire world if such a threat exists.

Cerberus

He has suggested this, but I am not sure how great he really considers this threat.

tchrist

I know.

That doesn't stop my mind from crashing.

Cerberus

I mean, NATO already has the Baltics and Poland.

tchrist

?

I'm missing the segue or sequitur or something.

Cerberus

Those are much closer to Petersburg and Moscow.

tchrist

04:49

They aren't as good at speaking Russian?

Cerberus

So I don't think Ukraine could be a greater threat to the existence of Russia militarily.

tchrist

Still pisses him off.

Cerberus

If NATO wanted to attack Moscow, she would do it from the Baltics, wouldn't she?

tchrist

@Cerberus That isn't the threat he perceives. Ukraine's continued existence as a functioning democracy isn't a military threat to Russia's existence.

Cerberus

Well, I think that is an important part.

The SU has always been afraid of an invasion.

tchrist

04:51

It's a cultural threat to his own position.

Cerberus

@tchrist That is also a threat, but not the one he utters publicly, I believe.

tchrist

He does not want democracy in a place that speaks Russian to be seen to work out well for that people. Or else he sees his days as numbered.

He might be right about that.

Cerberus

Indeed, he does not.

But he keeps talking about NATO membership, not EU.

While the EU is a much greater threat to the Russian government's way of life.

tchrist

Nobody has promised in a binding treaty of mutual defence to come to the aid of some EU country that is not NATO.

Cerberus

Not quite.

tchrist

04:55

And Turkey is NATO without being EU.

Cerberus

The EU has an article about mutual defence.

tchrist

Does it?

Cerberus

Yes.

Though I believe it is slightly more ambiguous than NATO's.

tchrist

Are you sure this means he can't just nick Ireland if he feels like it?

Cerberus

But it is EU membership that spreads democracy, NATO much less so.

tchrist

04:56

Indeed.

Cerberus

And yet he focuses on NATO.

So I think the threat he focuses on publicly is the military threat.

It seems outlandish to us, but Russia has been afraid of a Western invasion at least since the Soviet revolution.

When she is weak.

tchrist

Erdoğan isn't very democratty. But neither is Orbán.

Cerberus

No, Orban is under pressure.

tchrist

@Cerberus Why in the world would we want to do that!?!?

Cerberus

"Putin must not remain in power" = "we will somehow topple the Russian government, maybe by a quick, surgical decapitation of the government in Moscow".

tchrist

04:59

Yes, it's outlandish.

Cerberus

That is why Biden is so careful, most of the time: he knows Russia is a bit paranoid.

tchrist

I'm perfectly happy to see him overthrown by his own people. I could not countenance Western assassination.

Cerberus

But Putin can.

Because it is exactly what he tried in Ukraine.

tchrist

You know why, right?

Cerberus

And look what how Saddam Hussein was toppled.

tchrist

05:01

It's like why he won't eat anything around other people.

Cerberus

Still, America would not try this on a nuclear power, I believe.

But Putin isn't sure.

tchrist

These crazies always imagine that other people are as fucked up as they are. The thief always fears theft, the honest man thinks much less of it.

Cerberus

The West has been fomenting rebellion in Moscow for decades.

What the West did in Ukrain, Georgia, Moldova, some other places, could also happen in Russia, he fears.

And could it not?

tchrist

It reminds me far too much of Trump's constant projecting on to others his own vices and evils.

Cerberus

I do think it is paranoid. But perhaps less so than it might seem appropriate to be to us.

tchrist

05:04

@Cerberus I don't think the West Alliance is in charge of Ukraine and Georgia and Moldova. I could be wrong.

Cerberus

Not in charge, but greatly assisting currents in society that wanted anti-Western governments overthrown.

MEPs stood on the Maidan in 2014.

tchrist

Hm.

Cerberus

We want to spread freedom and democracy.

And we want governments that are not pro-Western gone if possible.

We sponsor organisations in their countries.

tchrist

If you want to be part of the world market, you have to play by the rules set up after WW2 where you aren't allowed to redraw another country's borders to make it part of you. Otherwise welcome to the pariah statehood of North Korea.

Cerberus

In the past, several Western countries have even undermined or outright toppled governments that were anti-Western though not anti-democratic, such as Mossadeq, and various governments in Latin America.

tchrist

05:08

The Latin American crap was evil.

Operation Condor

Operation Condor (Spanish: Operación Cóndor, also known as Plan Cóndor; Portuguese: Operação Condor) was a United States-backed campaign of political repression and state terror involving intelligence operations and assassination of opponents. It was officially and formally implemented in November 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America.Due to its clandestine nature, the precise number of deaths directly attributable to Operation Condor is highly disputed. Some estimates are that at least 60,000 deaths can be attributed to Condor, roughly 30,000 of these i...

Cerberus

I think we also tried to help the Whites in Russia?

I think the worst of that is past us.

But trying to effect régime change? I don't think so.

tchrist

effect

Cerberus

Especially by non-military means.

tchrist

cause

Cerberus

Well, both effect and affect hehe.

But, yes, I meant effect.

So that is why I think Putin's paranoia is still crazy, but slightly less crazy than we might imagine.

And our leaders know this and try not to feed Putin's paranoia, try to make him feel safe at home.

tchrist

05:11

Putin thinks Libya counts.

Cerberus

No doubt.

And the Arab Spring.

tchrist

Which seems to have come to nought.

Cerberus

Indeed.

The Near and Middle East, and most of Africa, just don't seem ready, unfortunately.

I do hope Nigeria's democracy is stable enough.

tchrist

Not sure.

It's very hard to trust Nigerian princes.

Cerberus

Princes, even?

tchrist

05:38

Advance-fee scam

An advance-fee scam is a form of fraud and is one of the most common types of confidence tricks. The scam typically involves promising the victim a significant share of a large sum of money, in return for a small up-front payment, which the fraudster claims will be used to obtain the large sum. If a victim makes the payment, the fraudster either invents a series of further fees for the victim to pay or simply disappears.The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) states that "An advance fee scheme occurs when the victim pays money to someone in anticipation of receiving something of greater value...

Cerberus

Ah, those.

Good night.

Vikas

Soon Putin will say Grapes are sour.

2

In Russian of course.

Vikas

07:41

@CowperKettle If I may ask you also go to gym/exercises or running is sufficient?

I remember in college I would go for run and that was best feeling. Never felt I need any exercise in gym.

Ok

It's great

@CowperKettle Yeah but main problem is what I probably told you a few days ago. Some people who know you will interrupt you in middle for a chat and will ask weird uncomfortable questions.

Temperature can still be managed early in the morning.

Because:

There are fields mostly in small towns. So they somehow lower the temperature on roads nearby them. I have felt the same.

@CowperKettle Mainly people run on public roads and even state highways.

Some run in parks which are small and full of people.

I would love to run in a place where nobody can see me

@CowperKettle Yeah something like that.

haha

They will boil in the heat

That would be too expensive 😂

It looks beautiful to me.

Robusto supports Ukraine

12:50

"We Will Win" - A Ukrainian's Report from the War

►

Robusto supports Ukraine

13:50

@Cerberus: I had to block two more IP addresses from North Amsterdam. I can't imagine why they would be interested in our site. Vandalism seems like the only potential objective.

M.A.R.

14:12

@RobustosupportsUkraine VPN definitely

I think almost every VPN I've tried has had Amsterdam servers.

Lawrence

15:49

Just testing ...

@ElectionBot alive

@ElectionBot help

Looks like ElectionBot is room-specific.

Cerberus

@RobustosupportsUkraine Looks like some spam/hacking servers?

Botnet?

tchrist

‘The Dots Were All There. We Just Couldn’t Connect Them’: One of the last American journalists in Moscow recounts how she — and her dog — escaped Russia as Putin’s new iron curtain fell is a bit longish but a rewarding and insightful read by an accomplished writer, a 40-year expat and the last from The Moscow Times to escape the new Soviet Union earlier this month.

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…