English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

I, at least, am so happy to see some evidence of rational thinking and clear writing in some questions that I'm apt to upvote them out of sheer relief, even if the question is trivial. — John Lawler 8 hours ago

Mitch

2:33 AM

@M.A.R. that's part of my concern. Most of the alright things I see tend towards the autocratic

@M.A.R. I said 1st world problems because I realize that the problems w democracy we're having in the US is not the same kind of problems w democracy they're having in say Venezuela

Cerberus

@Mitch Alright or alTright?

Mitch

@Cerberus cripes

Cerberus

That, too.

Mitch

@tchrist sounds like a great class... Except for the stuff about Wolfram

@Cerberus or it could all be the news people hopping up the idea of more stupider politicians moreso than ever before, driving readership?

I'm not sure I buy that reasoning though. I'm just repeating what I've heard

Cerberus

I don't know what you're talking about.

Vikas

2:48 AM

> The quality of raw milk in India is under question and coming to packeted milk, a study conducted by Harvard University’s school of public health in 2015 confirmed the role of BPA (chemical bisphenol A) in the plastic we buy. This BPA found in plastic is known to disrupt hormones and hence may lead to many diseases. This is because when this plastic comes in contact with sunlight, this BPA can leak into our milk and hence get contaminated.

Xanne

3:01 AM

@Vikas The BPA gets contaminated? That’s what it says.

tchrist

3:24 AM

It does say that. Oops.

> BPA has been found to produce several defects in the embryo, such as feminization of male fetuses, atrophy of the testes and epididymides, increased prostate size, shortening of AGD, disruption of BTB, and alteration of adult sperm parameters (e.g.,sperm count, motility, and density). Higher BPA levels in blood, in women, have been associated with a variety of conditions including obesity, endometrial hyperplasia, recurrent miscarriages, and polycystic ovarian syndrome.

Vikas

@Xanne Bad English maybe.

tchrist

Yep.

Vikas

It should have been ...and hence the milk gets contaminated.

CowperKettle

3:57 AM

> The next generation of artificial intelligence may be 1000 times more energy efficient than current programs, thanks to computer chips that work like the human brain. science.org/content/article/…

Run for the hills.

@tchrist Each time I come across a new news item about plastics, I get the urge to replace all plastic water bottles with glass ones. But that would be very expensive and hard.

Had such research been done before the introduction of plastic bottles into use, they would have been not allowed into manufacture.

The only reason we're still using plastic bottles is because ditching them would wreck the world economy. They are a health hazard.

Loihi 2, a chip with 1 million neurons and 120 million synapses.

> For their second test, in which the computer needed to answer questions about the meaning of stories up to 20 sentences long, the neuromorphic setup was as much as 16 times as efficient as algorithms run on conventional computer processors, the authors report this week in Nature Machine Intelligence.

CowperKettle

4:27 AM

@Vikas There's a hypothesis that cow milk plays a role in the development of autism, because it contains high concentrations of the folate receptor alpha, which may cause immune cross-reaction to the human FRa.

It a year or three there may be more evidence for or against this hypothesis. A large study is ongoing.

CowperKettle

5:35 AM

> The first gene therapy directly administered into the brain has been recommended for approval.

What if patients with depression could be helped similarly, by injecting viral vectors that would boost hippocampal neurogenesis and plasticity?

That would be a breakthrough. And in other mental disorders too.

Matt E. Эллен

8:35 AM

@KitZ.Fox hi! I miss you, too. My teeth are just fine where they are, thank you.

M.A.R.

8:52 AM

@CowperKettle see above. The technology is too young. Something like that needs 20 to 30 years. Even then, some unforeseen circumstances may arise that make it impractical

Let's see if CRISPR-related technologies live up to their hype

M.A.R.

9:11 AM

@MattE.Эллен subjectively, dialysis is like slow torture. It's horrible. Thus, a lot of transplant patients are super grateful that they can consume most fruits again, tomatoes, fish, chocolate, red meat etc., that they don't have to endure huge painful needles sucking out their blood into a machine that ultimately doesn't even come close to clearing out their blood, and that they don't have tens of hours of their week taken from them.

Compared to that, kidney transplantation is heaven. The complications in transplantation are two-fold: The immunosuppressants, and chronic and acute rejection. Immunosuppressive drugs have a narrow therapeutic index and complicated kinetics, meaning they can be toxic. Tacrolimus makes my hands shake, makes myjoints ache because of hyperuricemia, increases my blood potassium levels, does all sorts of unsavory things in general.

Also, because it's metabolized by special enzymes in the liver called cytochrome P450 enzymes, it means I cannot drink grapefruit juice, and be careful about consuming anything else that may alter the concentration of the drug by affecting the enzymes greatly.

CowperKettle

In 2021, the US population increased by 1.9 mn people. In 2021, the population of Russia decreased by 0.7 mn people. This includes migration from other countries to Russia. Without this migration, the loss would have amounted to over 1 mn people.

M.A.R.

Pretty tame compared to not even being able to eat fricking tomatoes

Matt E. Эллен

!!

CowperKettle

@M.A.R. Shaking hands! I'm sorry to hear that!

M.A.R.

The second problem is the mental burden associated with the monitoring required to detect acute and chronic rejection. This kidney is gonna fail, and I dunno when, and then it's back to ~~solitary~~ dialysis

@CowperKettle tremor is dose-dependent. If the patient adheres to the timing and the levels are controlled well, it's usually not a problem, except initiation of therapy right after the operation, where the doses are high

Matt E. Эллен

9:23 AM

@M.A.R. that sounds debilitating.

M.A.R.

A kidney generated from the patient's own stem cells will circumvent both problems. An artificial kidney will probably require anticoagulant therapy, and they're pretty crappy drugs themselves. An artificial kidney with biocompatible parts may not require anything but monitoring, but it'd be expensive

@MattE.Эллен well, not that much. Usually it just occupies some dark corner of your mind. The best part is your life is mostly back to normal, so normal people worries take up most of your worries

Matt E. Эллен

how long would it take to make a kidney from stem cells?

M.A.R.

@MattE.Эллен it should be right around the corner

Been like that for years. Like a lot of modern advancements, we were and probably still are very optimistic about how long it would take

CowperKettle

Research for an artificial cornea has been ongoing for years, and still no immediate result is expected. And corneas are very simple compared with kidneys.

> "The use of donor corneal tissue to construct artificial biokernels has a long way to go" (from a review published in 2021).

Matt E. Эллен

which do you think people would prefer: periodically replacing body parts, or uploading their consciouness into a robot body?

CowperKettle

9:34 AM

They will read a lot of reviews online first.

Matt E. Эллен

:D

CowperKettle

(0:

"Can I afford an iKidney 12 with a lot of additional options, or should I just grow my own replacement from stem cells?"

M.A.R.

@MattE.Эллен periodically uploading their consciousness into body parts

Matt E. Эллен

I've heard a few horror stories of people with things like pacemakers or other electronic implants being SOL because the manufacturer went bust so noone can maintain it

M.A.R.

"Woohoo, I'm a kidney now!"

Matt E. Эллен

9:40 AM

@M.A.R. ever wanted to be in two places at once? well now you can, because you can have multiple bodies!

Vikas

9:58 AM

What is the expiry date of iKidney 12?

Is iKidney compatible with my brain chip?

CowperKettle

Can I hack my iKidney to make it produce rainbow piss, like on Android Kidney 6.12?

Matt E. Эллен

lol

CowperKettle

10:26 AM

Humans carrying the CORD7 (cone-rod dystrophy 7) mutation possess increased verbal IQ and working memory.

They lose their eyesight gradually, but their brains work better because of more efficient neurotransmitter release.

Vikas

@CowperKettle You'll need to install some RGB drivers on it.

CowperKettle

))

Vikas

Kids would love to pee all day!

M.A.R.

11:04 AM

@CowperKettle Euler? Euler.

@CowperKettle "why can't I pee?" "You're out of color cartridges."

Matt E. Эллен

lol

M.A.R.

11:59 AM

> If you lost an arm, you only need to visit a secondhand shop

2

Robusto

12:29 PM

Physicists predict Earth will become a chaotic world, with dire consequences.

Pardon me for intruding on the Panglossian reverie, but ...

> A given climate provides for regular and predictable seasons and weather, and a phase transition in the climate leads to a new pattern of seasons and weather. When the climate goes through a phase transition, this means that Earth is experiencing a sudden and rapid change in patterns.

> ...
But in the worst cases, the researchers found that Earth's climate leads to chaos. True, mathematical chaos. In a chaotic system, there is no equilibrium and no repeatable patterns. A chaotic climate would have seasons that change wildly from decade to decade (or even year to year).

> ...
"A chaotic behavior means that it will be impossible to predict the behavior of Earth System in the future even if we know with great certainty its present state," Bertolami said. "It will mean that any capability to control and to drive the Earth System towards an equilibrium state that favors the habitability of the biosphere will be lost."

And this is to say nothing of the societal chaos that would ensue.

#Worldle #126 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

CowperKettle

1:31 PM

Word of the day: bili light

#Worldle #126 X/6 (97%)
🟩🟩🟩🟨⬜⬇️
🟩🟩🟩🟨⬜↙️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨↘️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨↗️
🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜➡️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨➡️
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

Mitch

1:45 PM

@Cerberus It's a common thing I've heard that journalism tends to the pessimistic because that is more interesting (and more people would then be inclined to read it and then the journalist enterprises would make more money by advertising).

Cerberus

@Mitch Yes, that is certainly true.

Good news is no news.

Mitch

some news sources moreso in than others (namely the disreputable ones) tend towards the more pessimistic (eg the aforementioned NY Post)

I suppose it also explains hype.

@Cerberus Headline "EVERYTHING WENT WELL TODAY"

Robusto

@Mitch Chicken Little vs. Candide Smackdown! Who will win?

Cerberus

@Mitch Especially in capitals!

@Mitch Yeah, scandals and conspiracies especially.

Robusto

And yet you can't discount actual warnings.

Sometimes the story is right, even if it predicts news you don't want to hear.

Mitch

1:50 PM

@Robusto Whatever happened to Chicken Little at the end of the story? Candide ended up being a gardener which is like the most boring thing of all.

@Cerberus It deserves a big headline

Robusto

@Mitch KFC.

Mitch

@Cerberus As long as it doesn't happen to me.

@Robusto mm mm mmmm

@Robusto Actually

haha a nerd's actually

Cerberus

Notice also how pessimistic the extreme right and the extreme left are.

Society must be destroyed, so bad are things.

Robusto

@Mitch You left out the "um ..."

Mitch

Actually, a lot of tech hype is -super- optimistic and whitewashes over negative consequences and the pessimists are drowned out as ... well... pessimists.

Robusto

1:53 PM

I'm not a pessimist. I'm actually hopeful. But you have to be aware of dangers.

Whistling through the graveyard isn't the same as sticking your head in the sand.

Mitch

all the "It'll be available in 5-10 years" is used all over tech news and notoriously repeated every 5-10 years

Except for the iPhone. That is the one thing that has changed life itself and nobody knew it was coming when it did in 2007.

@Robusto Like whistling in the sand

Sticking your head in the graveyard

ew

like pissing in a violin

Matt E. Эллен

above average mentions of urine in today's chat

Cerberus

@Mitch Those are not people to be taken seriously: they are advertising for their own business.

Robusto

Wordle 342 4/6

⬜🟨🟩🟨⬜
⬜🟨🟩🟩⬜
🟨⬜🟩🟩🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Mitch

@Cerberus It's not society as much as it is those particular people that I don't like that should be...

Cerberus

1:57 PM

Never trust what people working for a commercial operation say.

Mitch

that should be told to be quiet?

Cerberus

@Mitch Oops!

Mitch

removed?

Cerberus

Culled?

Deported?

Reëducated?

Gleichgeschaltet?

Mitch

@MattE.Эллен THRESHOLD EXCEEDED...

MICTURATION PROCESS INITIATED

Robusto

1:59 PM

@Mitch No peeing in chat.

Mitch

@Cerberus Reeducation. That sounds nice. Like going back to school to take a fun class like on wine tasting.

Cerberus

Yeah!

Or goat-milk tasting, as for the Uyghurs.

Mitch

@Cerberus I suppose the difference is that tech news is trying to get you to buy stuff and politics is trying to get you to hate the other politician and send money to the one that will defeat them?

Robusto

@Mitch Just go on a visit to Napa or Sonoma.

Mitch

That sounds so simplistic

Cerberus

2:01 PM

I suppose so.

But you should listen to independent people.

Robusto

Jun 24, 2014 at 1:19, by Mahnax

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/micturition

This one was news to me as well.

Kind of like discovering that a prof corrected my liquify to liquefy in a college paper.

CowperKettle

@MattE.Эллен But they are small mentions, as in pollakiuria.

Matt E. Эллен

2:23 PM

lol

I had to look that up

Cerberus

2:40 PM

It is post-classical Latin!

Actually, no, mingo is classical.

tchrist

3:06 PM

@Cerberus Casa Mingo is a classic and totally scrumpdiddlyumptious cider-house in the 4,000-acre Casa de Campo park in Madrid dating from the 19th century. There they make and serve cider the old-fashioned way, from a great height at the table, splashing everywhere. Cider is the traditional fermented beverage of "España Verde", that rarely visited coastline along the Cantabrian Sea.

As beer to Bavarians is cider to the Basques, Asturians, and Cantabrians.

It is a wonderful restaurant.

I've eaten there, or at least drunk, dozens of times.

@Cerberus Whether that's a visual pun on the name of the establishment I leave to your imagination.

The waiter is holding the cider bottle high above the frame in his right hand, pouring it into the class far, far below in his left so that it becomes bubbly from the impact. I think. Perhaps it is naturally bubbly, but I don't think so much as it is when served in that dramatic fashion.

> Casa Mingo is the Dean of the cider houses in Madrid and possibly all the existing in Spain. It opened its doors in 1888, When still had not been met 60 years of the disappearance of the great painter Francisco de Goya. The same that lit up with its frescoes nearby Hermitage of San Antonio de la Florida, designed by Ventura Rodríguez, also author of the Museo del Prado. Places that you can not miss.

The thick walls of what was an old warehouse of material when the railway infrastructures of the Peninsula began (specifically North or the Principe Pio station), they have seen three centuri…

I'm pasting their translated text. The Spanish of course reads better.

You have to pee all the time when you're downing all that cider.

> The amplitude of the ground floor and the top floor, as well as the splendid terraces that are in season, which is cool with the soft breeze that comes from the abundant groves of your environment, those of the Parque del Oeste, University City, Park light bulb, Casa de Campo, Rose garden and other areas of the Green corridor, give place to a large clientele that, sometimes, you have to wait a few minutes to get a table.

Decoration retains its full original, keeping the main features of its early stages, with an abundance of Woods, view bottles and barrels, What has motivated that it has…

> Cider, in its various forms, It is made from Villaviciosa Asturias Apple in their own facilities, making it the only true cider in the capital that produces only for self consumption. The cider goes directly from the factory to the table without loss of freshness and other virtues of this artisan product made according to traditional techniques, cannot be achieved by other industrial-type whose natural characteristics.

This tradition has made ciders Mingo, as also is called, in one of the best-known establishments in Madrid. Reference in the sector, his fame transcends national level com…

¿Ya veis?

There's using the original Spanish word order in the largely word-for-word translation. Again, to read it more naturally, which the tab to Spanish.

> Other attractions in the vicinity of the establishment you can visit before servicing forces in the cider are the Temple of Debod, whose Egyptian craftsmen also drank cider, the aforementioned Royal Palace, Plaza de Oriente, the Royal Theatre, the aforementioned chapels etc. A monumental set that does not escape the also near Madrid of the Austrias.

Loaded with local color moments linked closely to House Mingo are those who are given in “The burial of the sardine”, When the illustrious colleagues depart from the establishment for the painful trance to earth so tasty fish, remembering old…

The burial of the sardine

I remember that.

> Momentos cargados de tipismo ligados estrechamente a Casa Mingo son los que se dan en “El entierro de la sardina”, cuando los ilustres cofrades parten desde el establecimiento para el penoso trance de dar tierra a tan sabroso pescado, rememorando tiempos pretéritos en los que la falta de frigoríficos motivaba que el cuerpo insepulto del pescado conducía al nicho a muchos imprudentes.

> La sidra, en sus distintas modalidades, se elabora a partir de manzana asturiana de Villaviciosa en sus propias instalaciones, lo que la convierte en la única verdadera sidrería de la capital que produce sólo para autoconsumo.

No, that doesn't mean they feed the cider to their cars. :)

Cerberus

3:27 PM

@tchrist Hmm I'd expect cider to be much more expensive to make than beer!

You need so many apples for a drop!

CowperKettle

> De held prins Maurits kwam
met honderdduizend man
daar ging hij mee de heuvel op
en ook weer naar benee
en was 'ie bovenan
dan was 'ie niet benee
en was 'ie halverwege
was 'ie boven noch benee

Cerberus

Haha where did you find that!

CowperKettle

In Wikipedia:

The Grand Old Duke of York

"The Grand Old Duke of York" (also sung as The Noble Duke of York) is an English children's nursery rhyme, often performed as an action song. The eponymous duke has been argued to be a number of the bearers of that title, particularly Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany (1763–1827) and its lyrics have become proverbial for futile action. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 742. == Words == A modern version is: == Origins == Like many popular nursery rhymes the origins of the song have been much debated and remain unclear. Unusually the rhyme clearly refers to an historical person and...

Cerberus

Ah, I didn't know it was a translation.

I don't know it well.

CowperKettle

I just came across it randomly

Cerberus

3:37 PM

Always fun.

CowperKettle

Wikipedia has this link that opens a random page: Special:Random

Mitch

@Robusto that is very annoying because the verb is 'tp micturate'

Cerberus

@CowperKettle Ahh I had forgotten about that, such a great feature.

CowperKettle

Just Room Enough Island

Just Room Enough Island, also known as Hub Island, is an island located in the Thousand Islands chain, in New York, United States. The island is known for being the smallest inhabited island, which appears to be around 3,300 square feet (310 m2), or about one-thirteenth of an acre. Purchased by the Sizeland family in the 1950s, the island has a house, a tree, shrubs, and a small beach. == History == The island was bought in the 1950s by the Sizeland family, who wanted a holiday getaway and built a house there. Because of the island's small size, in 2010, the Washington Post stated, "One misstep...

Cerberus

3:54 PM

Pretty nice!

They could expand their garden a little bit.

Mitch

4:45 PM

@Cerberus They should secede. Establish a currency and postage system, unsecede, then finance their multinational corporation from speculation by philatelists an numismatists.

Robusto

5:18 PM

@Mitch Indeed. Sometimes the world just doesn't make sense.

Cerberus

7:37 PM

@Mitch Why hasn't anybody else thought of that??

Robusto

9:29 PM

Wordle (ES) #141 5/6

⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟨⬜🟩⬜
⬜⬜🟨🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

https://wordle.danielfrg.com/

That was a word I'd never heard of.

I only succeeded because there were few letters left that would fit in the way Spanish words are constructed in five letters.

jlliagre

9:52 PM

Wordle (ES) #141 4/6

⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩
🟨🟨⬜🟩🟩
⬜🟨🟨⬜🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

https://wordle.danielfrg.com/

@Robusto I struggled a lot. That's a odd word ;-)

tchrist

11:39 PM

> Forest Service fire investigators on Friday placed the blame for the Calf Canyon fire — one of two wildfires that combined to become New Mexico’s largest blaze — on a planned burn set over the winter that continued to smolder for months.

In a statement, the Forest Service said that what began as a controlled burn in the Santa Fe National Forest in January, meant to clear away vegetation and prevent catastrophic wildfires in the future, turned into a “sleeper fire.” It overwintered beneath the ground, continuing to burn slowly until it re-emerged in early April.

@Robusto (1) So now we learn that both your fires were caused by the United States Firestorm Service. (2) WTF is a fire overwintering underground!?

That sounds like our New Years' Eve fire, which still appears to have been started by a fire that's been overwintering underground for decades if not centuries.

Robusto

@tchrist Yeah, makes no sense to me. That prophylaxis is what caused the '88 Yellowstone fire as well.

tchrist

11:56 PM

And yet I also know that a century of leaving no spark unquenched has tremendously increased the risk of catastrophic fire.

People here have even died because of these. I don't know what to do.

Meaning, because of runaway wildfires started by prescribed burns.

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