@Mitch association fallacies are pretty weird. Almost everyone would say "Hitler was vegetarian so vegetarians are bad" and few people would say "Even Hitler was vegetarian"
Or maybe they do, dunno. I don't have very expansive social circles.
> Russia's deputy defence minister Alexander Fomin says Russia will "radically reduce" military activity outside Kyiv and Chernihiv - that's according to the news agency Tass.
@CowperKettle I read that "a beach in Yekaterinburg" and I thought "yeah, that checks out"
@CowperKettle it becomes increasingly clear why right-wing shills in America aspire to Russia's unhinged evil
@MattE.Эллен crazy how that works. It's like there is a simple maybe linear equation out there that describes people's interest in an online election of an SE site
@MattE.Эллен Well, the only Greek in the Catholic liturgy (pre-Vatican II) was in the Kyrie, kyrie eleison, which is "Lord have mercy." (Plus Christe eleison.)
@RobustosupportsUkraine It only looks that way using postage-stamp-sized resolution. Turns out that due to innumerable surveying errors during the nineteenth century, it's actually a polygon of many hundreds of tiny little sides.
The Kingdom by the Sea: A Journey Around Great Britain, originally published in 1983, is the account of a three-month-long journey taken by novelist Paul Theroux around the United Kingdom in the summer of 1982. Starting his journey in London, he takes a train to Margate on the English coast. He then travels roughly clockwise round the British coastline, mainly by train, getting as far north as Cape Wrath. He ends his journey in Southend. 1982 was the summer of the Falklands War and the year when Prince William was born.
The title of the book is taken from the opening lines of the poem Annabel Lee...
@tchrist Google Maps shows none of those little polygonal blemishes.
@RobustosupportsUkraine Just as to a first approximation we live on a planetary sphere. You just can't use spherical geometry to navigate our irregularly oblate spheroid with sufficient precision for real-world use like GPS.
A very small range of opposition is allowed in our newspapers. So when they're ranting against a politician, they start it by presupposing some very narrowminded orthodox nonsense that turns the whole thing into hot garbage
@Mitch exactly what I've been saying this whole time
When I zoomed in extremely Colorado a few days ago, I came to know a thing I was never aware of. I was surprised to see those circular fields. Never saw them or paid attention before.
@M.A.R. This is chat. Poetic license. I'm really sitting. Or really, actually, kind of slouching in a half sitting half lying position. What I'm saying is I'm lying. bald-faced lying.
Center-pivot irrigation (sometimes called central pivot irrigation), also called water-wheel and circle irrigation, is a method of crop irrigation in which equipment rotates around a pivot and crops are watered with sprinklers. A circular area centered on the pivot is irrigated, often creating a circular pattern in crops when viewed from above (sometimes referred to as crop circles, not to be confused with those formed by circular flattening of a section of a crop in a field). Most center pivots were initially water-powered, however today most are propelled by electric motors.
Center-pivot...
@tchrist I'm sure I could read that to find out, but those maps make it look like the radius is huge, like on the order of more than a mile. Is that right?
> The concept of zero as a written digit in the decimal place value notation was developed in India, presumably as early as during the Gupta period (c. 5th century), with the oldest unambiguous evidence dating to the 7th century.[38]
> In AD 813, astronomical tables were prepared by a Persian mathematician, Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, using Hindu numerals;[54] and about 825, he published a book synthesizing Greek and Hindu knowledge and also contained his own contribution to mathematics including an explanation of the use of zero
@Vikas of course they are, but I find it hard to believe that earlier civilizations didn't have a way to signify nothingness. At some point it qualified as an invention, and they decided, why not, let's call this one for the Indians
One important point is there was no mobiles back then. People just living in the moment.
They stared so hard at the sky they thought a couple of shiny dots were a bear
@RobustosupportsUkraine That song also says India gave zero, that's why others could reach Moon, could guess the distance between Earth and Sun etc. What else you want 😜
> The history of chess can be traced back nearly 1500 years to its earliest known predecessor, called chaturanga, in India; its prehistory is the subject of speculation. From India it spread to Persia. Following the Arab invasion and conquest of Persia, chess was taken up by the Muslim world and subsequently spread to southern Europe. The game evolved roughly into its current form by about 1500 CE.
Weddings are usually considered one of the most important fun/party day in India.
And Vengaboys - To Brazil! song is most popular song to be played in Indian weddings. Weddings are not complete without this song. Of course things are changing now.
My daughter-in-law can really shake it down, I learned. I expect my granddaughter will learn those things as well.
@Vikas Fun is something you do for amusement or exhilaration. I don't know how to explain it better than that. I have gone to weddings for money or for duty, and I didn't think they were amusing or exhilarating.
And most guests attend just to eat in the party, which I'm not big fan of.
As a kid we were conditioned as weddings == eat good stuff in the party
I'm tired of Indian news channels over dramatizing this war. Like North Korea will soon join the war ..... USA's nuclear weapons are ready and could be fired in next 24 hours......... World War is inevitable etc.
@Vikas Indians importing culture and calling everyone "sir" and "dear" left and right is arguably "incorrect". So-called Indianisms are a much grayer area.
Hey, hi! At some point in time President Biden said "We have the strongest and best system of higher education in the world...". I've just noticed that this collocation "strongest and best" is quite frequent. Do you see that as a very high degree of a single thing, or is there this qualitative+quantitative idea therein? Or is strongest about comparisons, competition? In this exemple from the President, which one is it?
@Vikas Currently, in formal letters, you're supposed to start them 'Dear Sir' or 'Dear Mr. President'. In speech, as @M.A.R. said, only old ladies use it as in 'Bring me some tea, dear'. Also weird British people will use it to mean 'expensive' "The cheapest Tesla's are quite dear" (or at least I think so, Americans hardly ever use it like that.
@RobustosupportsUkraine "Even if your warranty doesn't depend on you choosing synthetic engine oil, it's still the strongest and best choice for every engine." lolll
Mitch, you always think things that your underage charges don't use or recognize are invalid uses, relegating them to the literate or educated or literary or archaic or poetic or obsolete or British.
Like "very best" but more colloquial. @RobustosupportsUkraine Thanks there! I understand it's something that people often say for emphasis but it doesn't add much to best.
My favorite is something like "The new Dodge Ram trucks are unexcelled in their class!" ... which means, if you unpack the claim, that they're just like all the rest. No better and no worse.
@Mitch When in Greece, I was amused to see the word "exodus" all over the place on public transport and whatnot. It feels like a much more grandiose word, to me as an English native, than its everyday usage over there.