English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

6:35 AM

@Mitch Can't you buy empty bottles? And I think stainless steel is safer/better than plastic.

Xanne

8:52 AM

@CowperKettle raytheonmissilesanddefense.com/what-we-do/counter-uas/effectors

Xanne

10:17 AM

>Congratulations, you solved Redactle #86!
* The answer was:
* You solved it in 62 guesses
* Your accuracy was 43.55%
* You have solved 26 consecutive Redactles

I do the wordles but I don’t know how to npmake the matrices blanking out the letters. How would I find out how to do that? I do the worldles too.

make not npmake. I should be more careful.

SmokeDetector

12:04 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Potentially bad ip for hostname in answer, potentially bad ns for domain in answer, username similar to website in answer (70): Entertainment-related compounds‭ by creative arcades‭ on english.SE

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Potentially bad ip for hostname in answer, potentially bad ns for domain in answer, username similar to website in answer, blacklisted user (141): Is there a word or phrase for video games in which the goal is to maximize your score?‭ by creative arcades‭ on english.SE

Laurel

12:48 PM

I thought that pantsing was the only verb that was formed from a plural noun but apparently chopse is the same way

Rowan Parkinson

The antonym of increasing is decreasing.
But the negation of increasing is either decreasing or constant.
Does it mean that antonym and negation are different, right?

Laurel

oed.com/view/Entry/89611787

Rowan Parkinson

I will be back in several hours. :-)

Laurel

@RowanParkinson The negation of yellow is "not yellow" but it doesn't really have an antonym (or maybe you can argue it has many)

Rowan Parkinson

@Laurel Oh ok. Thank you very much. :-)

1:15 PM

@Laurel Yes, I find it puzzling that so many people think every word should have an antonym.

#Worldle #162 2/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟨⬜⬆️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

_____________
Wordle 378 5/6

⬜⬜⬜🟩⬜
⬜⬜⬜🟩🟨
🟨🟨⬜🟩⬜
⬜⬜🟩🟩🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

That was an interesting one.

The World Cup That Should Never Have Happened | Qatar 2022 Documentary

1:52 PM

►

2:43 PM

> JPMorgan Chase: the price of oil may reach $190 to $380 per barrel if Russia decides to drastically curtail its exports

3:32 PM

Belarus has suddenly prolonged its military exercises from by 8 days, until July 9, and forbade all medical professionals from leaving the country until that date.

Let's talk about Ohio, Indiana, a girl, and the Supreme Court....

4:07 PM

►

As Ohio restricts abortions, 10-year-old girl travels to Indiana for procedure

@M.A.R. I suppose our government is becoming more like yours every day.

4:26 PM

Yes, that's bad news.

4:49 PM

the worst news is Qatar's "government"

@M.A.R. Does Iran restrict abortions?

Michael Rybkin

Native speakers, please check this sentence please: I would love a pair of those boots. I'm a size 9.

@FaheemMitha Whether it does or doesn't is irrelevant. The US government is leaning more and more toward loosing the hand of religion on the people.

@MichaelRybkin Perfectly idiomatic. No worries.

@Robusto Irrelevant to what?

@FaheemMitha To the larger progress of theocracy.

Michael Rybkin

4:55 PM

@Robusto Thank you very much. You're always such a good help.

loosing?

@user4539917 Letting loose from its restraints, as of hounds after prey.

@Robusto I was asking @M.A.R. about Iran. No larger anything was intended.

religion for the people, by the people, and of the people

5:09 PM

> Up to 90 percent of Qatar’s population is composed of noncitizens, including expatriates and migrant workers as well as some stateless residents, who have no political rights or electoral opportunities. Citizenship is inherited exclusively from a Qatari father; residents can apply for citizenship after 25 years in the country, but this is rarely granted.

> Pliny the Elder, a Roman writer, documented the earliest account pertaining to the inhabitants of the peninsula around the mid-first century AD, referring to them as the Catharrei, a designation which may have derived from the name of a prominent local settlement.

5:42 PM

@FaheemMitha Iran does allow abortions for medical reasons up to the 19th gestational week. Screening for birth defects was compulsory but has only recently been changed to optional.

@M.A.R. That's fairly limited, then.

@user4539917 A lot of the Middle Eastern countries have fairly terrible govts. Make India (even now) look civilized.

This is more liberal than I imagined actually, which is why I wondered where exactly other countries stand in an earlier discussion here. In Iraq for example, any form of abortion is illegal, which is just absurd.

Is homosexuality illegal?

But yeah we're also far from legalizing abortion in general, and before that hijab and things like that need to go first

It'll take a while

@user4539917 No such things as gay marriage, but I think a gender dysphoric or non-binary person is not immediately assumed to be a criminal

@M.A.R. As far as I'm aware, abortion is legal in India. But of course you still need to pay for it.

Cerberus

5:46 PM

@M.A.R. I heard that transsexual operations are legal and even paid for by the government?

Again, stemming from the fact that whenever expert opinions are required, doctors have leaned heavily on socially liberal policies, and reinforcing my opinion that our medical system is disproportionately "good" compared with what else we got

@Cerberus I think I looked it up a while back and yeah, that is the case

@M.A.R. My impression, based on extremely limited knowledge, is that Iran and India are not very far apart in many ways, with India perhaps a bit more permissive in some respects.

But I don't know much about India, and almost nothing about Iran, so that could be way off.

Anyway, I hope everyone is having a good weekend. As far as possible.

We've been having a lot of rain here.

@M.A.R. It sounds like your health care system is way better than India, however.

@FaheemMitha sounds about right. On the one hand, our population is not in nine digits, so what you hear about how the lower quartile in India live doesn't happen much. On the other hand, the crazy inflation rates and near collapsing economy means our poor are just as poor, maybe a bit more dignified and "Catholic" sort of poor, if you know what I mean

@M.A.R. Do you currently have bad inflation? Is so, sorry to hear that. It's quite had here, but not yet at crazy levels.

@M.A.R. Most of India is extremely poor. But I suppose that's not news to you. I just hope Iran has a better support system that India does.

It's so inflated it's inflammated

5:52 PM

@M.A.R. Heh. So, how much is it currently?

@FaheemMitha I think we do, but it's only because it's a few ten million poor, not over half a billion

@M.A.R. India's poor are actually quite dignified. They come across mostly as a lot saner than the rich people here, who tend to be more than a bit mad.

@FaheemMitha who knows. It's always between 30 and 40 percent.

@M.A.R. Oh. That's very bad.

Our healthcare system is 'good' due to several reasons, and I'm being, uh, intuitive here, what I mean is I'm making it up as I go

5:54 PM

@M.A.R. I don't follow.

Firstly, medicine has always held a sacred position among the careers to pursue in Iranian families. Second, medical fields here are what engineering and the like are in India. Doctors find pots of leprechaun gold left and right, according to Iranian parents. Third, there has always been a few conscientious doctors that pursue the broader interests of patients and their colleagues, and fourth, insurance companies aren't allowed to go nuts with the rates here, often.

Because we're one step removed from North Korea in terms of isolation from the rest of the world, people have the impression we don't have much of any industry left, which is true to varying extents

Additionally, due to crappy policies a decade or two back, which led to the admission of many engineering students who are now working often irrelevant jobs, engineering and computer-related fields have lost their luster

@Robusto our government senses the danger in that and we're slowly regressing ourselves, don't you worry

You still have a while to catch up

@M.A.R. Medicine, Law and Engineering have a similar status in India, I think. Again, based on my deficient knowledge.

And in India people are mostly interested in how much money they can make.

@FaheemMitha same here of course.

Which makes for bad doctors, incompetent engineers, and greedy and corrupt lawyers.

A vocation it is not.

Law has very bad PR here. It wasn't ever popular I think. Engineering and computer science have lost their charm, as I mentioned.

6:05 PM

If you find a competent doctor in Bombay who will properly listen to you and answer your questions and concerns, you're lucky.

There are a few like that, but they are mostly younger, I think. And have more experience of the outside world.

@M.A.R. Being a lawyer is supposed to be about helping people. At least partly. It isn't.

There might be other reasons if the Indian healthcare system is uncharacteristically bad. I mean, it's one place the two countries clearly diverge. Less than a century ago Iran was brimming with Indian doctors, because we had almost no Iranian doctors, just Hakims and the sort

Might be our entire system is just very young, and India's is too ripe.

@M.A.R. India is just a very corrupt sort of place. Look at the kind of people who run it. Is Iran any better?

@M.A.R. And I don't know if it is uncharacteristically bad. Is any place any better?

I did see doctors in the US, and they seemed better, but I didn't use it much. Certainly the system was very expensive, which is its own specific kind of corruption.

And my limited experience of the UK system was terrible. Totally uninterested doctors.

One got the impression they didn't give a fig what happened to you.

@FaheemMitha Western Europe? And American doctors are definitely good, but it's a system that bills you for handkerchiefs

@M.A.R. Yes, Western Europe might be better. I've heard France has quite a good and efficient system. But zero first hand experience.

@FaheemMitha there are bad apples everywhere but I don't know if you can generalize like that

6:13 PM

@M.A.R. Well, this was based on experiences with multiple doctors. But sure, maybe I was unlucky.

Frankly, I find the British rather like that in general.

ConGovDeIn

@CowperKettle Hi. Do you think overweight (more than 10 kg than what the max. BMI allows) can cause arthritis?

I mean, are there any real evidences of that?

@M.A.R. Do you have any idea what Japan's healthcare system is like?

@FaheemMitha oh, Japan and South Korea are also pretty good, as far as I know. S. Korea maybe a bit heavy on the monetary side? But maybe that's my impression.

Japan I think has universal healthcare, and culturally they don't make a fuss about funding a public service

@M.A.R. OK. What do you mean "a bit heavy on the monetary side"?

@FaheemMitha more involvement of the private sector in general, more expensive than Japan and most of Europe. I think.

6:28 PM

@M.A.R. Oh, I see. Like India, then.

India's healthcare is mostly privatized. And very profit oriented, as you would expect.

The Indian state puts almost no money into healthcare. This is a longstanding lack of priorities, not something new. But I have the impression it's getting worse, regardless.

Unsurprising, since they seem to like how things are run in the US in general

It's relatively cheap, though, compared to most places.

@M.A.R. They meaning India? Or the people who run India?

We are also slowly adopting more capitalistic policies, for all our Great Satan posturing

@FaheemMitha the oligarchs

But it's much slower than India

@M.A.R. You mean your country's regress is much slower than India?

@M.A.R. Do you think Japan would a good place to have eye surgery done? I was assuming it would be very expensive, but I haven't actually checked.

We've always taken some inspiration from France and Germany in policymaking as well, historically.

@FaheemMitha hah, that's too broad. Socially, we're obviously way ahead at the whole regression thing

@FaheemMitha no idea at all, sorry

6:33 PM

@M.A.R. I meant in terms of health care. Sorry if I was not being specific enough. Or more broadly, in terms of capitalism.

@M.A.R. No problem.

But Iran doesn't have a stock market or publicly traded companies. Or does it?

Oh it does. Never mind.

@FaheemMitha oh, in healthcare we're moving forward in some aspects and regressing in others, as I'm sure is also the case with India

@M.A.R. It's just generally bad in India. Not in terms of technology per se. In terms of service to the people.

Medical professionals love modernity. The whole profession is always being modernized, and the arrow is pointing forward. Regarding other issues like insurance or patient satisfaction, well, it gets complicated

@FaheemMitha not just technology. Newer, safer medical practices, enforcing medical practices that are neglected (which is a very common issue in developing nations), even including how to behave towards a patient

@M.A.R. Again, doctors are supposed to be about helping people.

Entirely new medical fields popping up, reducing drug-related adverse events etc etc.

6:38 PM

@M.A.R. The way doctors here behave is generally appalling. It could definitely use some work. I could tell you horror stories.

The way they behave towards someone like me is bad enough. I can only imagine how they behave with the general run of India, which is poor and illiterate.

Does sound like an issue that will hopefully improve with "modernity"

@M.A.R. It's hard to say if or when it will get better.

Things in India are certainly not improving in general.

@M.A.R. How much do you know about prostate cancer? If anything?

@FaheemMitha it's . . . bad?

I know a few general things about the drugs and stuff

More than the average layman, but nowhere near a specialist obviously

7:00 PM

@M.A.R. OK.

jlliagre

8:03 PM

Wordle 378 5/6

⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
🟨🟨🟨⬜⬜
🟨⬜⬜🟨🟨
⬜⬜🟨🟩🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

@jlliagre Are you following the Tour?

Orcs are eating great white sharks’ livers off South Africa’s coast.

And what are they supposed to eat them off of, paper plates?

Shrimp toast?

Doug Stanhope on nationalism

@tchrist Orcas, not orcs. There is nothing Tolkienesque about the South African coat.

►

*coast

jlliagre

8:27 PM

Wordle (ES) #177 3/6

⬜⬜⬜🟨🟩
⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

https://wordle.danielfrg.com/

@Robusto Loosely. I sometimes watch it when the landscape is nice. If it happens to be close to where I am, I also move to the side of the road to see it.

@Vikas "What is the use of these green and red lines on Snellen/Eye chart?"

'lines' is plural so its modifier should agree.

@FaheemMitha Oh I'm just making stuff up. I don't know what the usage stats are in the US. But I hear and see trends from my own personal perspective. It seemed like the whole 'bottled water thing in the US started in the 70's with Perrier and Evian and the general comedic view was that it was frivolous especially when tap water in the US (except for some few places) is unnoticeably different from the 'spring water' that is sold in stores).

8:46 PM

@Mitch It's a very harmful sort of frivolity.

@Robusto Oh. I guess it's not off the Orcadian coast after all.

I didn't know Georgians used a different alphabet. There's this wonderful pianist named Khat'ia Buniatishvili and YouTube gives her name as ხატია ბუნიათიშვილი. I wonder where that writing system comes from.

But yes it feels like there is a current trend (last 10-20 years) for single personal water bottles. Traditionally they are made of plastic but more and more are made of non-plastic as you suggest.

Single use is obviously the real problem. Serious plastic isn't that much of a problem. I.e. I have UPVC windows here. They aren't going to be contaminating the environment any time soon. And anyway, I think they're recyclable. Put them in in late 2014. They still look OK.

@tchrist That's in Afrik-hai, isn't it?

8:48 PM

@FaheemMitha Tell that to Europe. That's were the whole business seemed to start. Their tap water is just fine too. Maybe it's for when you're walking around? I don't know.

@Robusto I can't answer about their orthography, but I believe that Georgian is part of a small language isolate, the same way Basque is.

@Mitch Well, it's not so bad if it's a reusable plastic container. It's very bad when it's a one time use thing. Obviously.

Which I only just recently learned. It's not Slavic.

> The Kartvelian family has no known relation to any other language family, making it one of the world's primary language families.

Anyway, stainless steel containers are probably the way to go. Unbreakable glass is possibly better. I heard rumors of glass that can bounce.

> The origin of the Georgian script is poorly known, and no full agreement exists among Georgian and foreign scholars as to its date of creation, who designed the script, and the main influences on that process.

8:50 PM

@tchrist Wow. One wonders how it arose.

Georgian scripts

The Georgian scripts are the three writing systems used to write the Georgian language: Asomtavruli, Nuskhuri and Mkhedruli. Although the systems differ in appearance, their letters share the same names and alphabetical order and are written horizontally from left to right. Of the three scripts, Mkhedruli, once the civilian royal script of the Kingdom of Georgia and mostly used for the royal charters, is now the standard script for modern Georgian and its related Kartvelian languages, whereas Asomtavruli and Nuskhuri are used only by the Georgian Orthodox Church, in ceremonial religious texts and...

There was a scene in 'Heathers' the 1980's dark comedy, where the main pair wanted to make a 'hit' look like a mutual suicide by putting some telling objects on them as clues for the poiice. One was 'water bottles' because the police would then figure the pair were gay.

@Mitch Only because runners seldom carry candles.

Surely that's bottled water that's gay, not jogger's bottles.

You know, the kinds with some unrepronounceable French brand name.

> Acqua di Cristallo “Tributo a Modigliani” – $60,000

Okay, maybe Italian will do in a pinch.

Awkwafina?

> With Acqua di Cristallo Tributo a Modigliani, you can get a taste of both water and gold. The hand-crafted bottle, which is made out of 24-karat gold with 5mg of 23 K gold dust, was based on the artwork of Italian artist Amedeo Clemente Modigliani. Contained inside this extravagant 1.250ml bottle is a combination of glacier water from Iceland and natural spring waters from France and Fiji Islands.

9:00 PM

@tchrist 1.250ml isn't a whole lot of water.

That's an awful lot of money for a bottle that holds merely a quasquimilliliter, don't you think?

jinx

yes.

Wordle (ES) #177 4/6

⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
⬜🟨🟨🟨🟩
🟩🟩⬜🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

https://wordle.danielfrg.com/

Seems ilke it should have been measured in drams. Or grains.

It had 4x the gold that it had water.

4 * 1.25 milliliter = 5 milligramis

Grammies, that is. Those look like little statuettes to me.

Where would orcas develop a taste for foie gras?

gold and silver supposedly have antimicrobial properties, like in socks to help prevent smell?

@M.A.R. Would they still maintain those properties if ingested? I would think the costs outweigh the benefits.

@Mitch And copper.

9:14 PM

I bet plutonium has antimicrobial properties as well.

> Bacteria, yeasts, and viruses are rapidly killed on metallic copper surfaces, and the term “contact killing” has been coined for this process. While the phenomenon was already known in ancient times, it is currently receiving renewed attention. This is due to the potential use of copper as an antibacterial material in health care settings.

"Known in ancient times" sounds curious.

The only virus known to Ancient Rome was poison.

> The oldest recorded medical use of copper is mentioned in the Smith Papyrus, one of the oldest books known (8). This Egyptian medical text, written between 2600 and 2200 B.C., describes the application of copper to sterilize chest wounds and drinking water (8). Greeks, Romans, Aztecs, and others also used copper or copper compounds for the treatment of such ailments as headaches, burns, intestinal worms, and ear infections and for hygiene in general.

Okay, I'm going to show my stupidity. How could they know to "sterilize" against something they didn't know existed?

I guess they just noticed that it stopped infection.

> The use of copper as an antimicrobial agent continued until the advent of commercially available antibiotics in 1932.

It's a lot easier to kill viruses on surfaces of things than in vivo.

Well, presuming that you want the host to remain among the living.

It's a phenomenally well-cited paper.

Many-cited?

> The study of the antimicrobial properties of metallic copper surfaces is a relatively recent development and gained momentum when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) registered almost 300 different copper surfaces as antimicrobial in 2008 (epa.gov/pesticides/factsheets/copper-alloy-products.htm).

Self-sterilizing door knobs and such would certainly have an appeal in a high-exposure area like a health care setting.

They can't forget to clean themselves, or be late to do so.

> Nevertheless, a few general principles appear clear: higher copper content of alloys (43), higher temperature (10), and higher relative humidity (25) increased the efficacy of contact killing. Treatments that lowered corrosion rates, e.g., application of corrosion inhibitors or a thick copper oxide layer, lowered the antimicrobial effectiveness of copper surfaces (9).

Oh, maybe it corrodes them to death?

Probably its corrosion process sucks nutrients out of the microbes.

9:33 PM

That can't be the mechanism with gold.

Copper corrodes and silver tarnishes, but gold never loses its lustre. Neither, I believe, does platinum.

@tchrist I was speaking only for copper, as a possible explanation of the corrosion issue. Obviously absent corrosion such would not apply.

Although I believe auric sesquioxide can be made. I don't know that it occurs in nature, though.

> Gold(III) oxide (Au₂O₃) is an inorganic compound of gold and oxygen with the formula Au₂O₃. It is a red-brown solid that decomposes at 160 °C.[3]

According to X-ray crystallography, Au2O3 features square planar gold centers with both 2- and 3-coordinated oxides. The four Au-O bond distances range from 193 to 207 picometers.[1] It can be prepared by heating amorphous hydrated gold(III) oxide with perchloric acid and an alkali metal perchlorate in a sealed quartz tube at a temperature of around 250 °C and a pressure of around 30 MPa.[4]

> insoluble in water, soluble in hydrochloric and nitric acid

Well sure: for "hydrochloric and nitric acid", read "aqua regia".

Aqua regia

Aqua regia (; from Latin, literally "regal water" or "royal water") is a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid, optimally in a molar ratio of 1:3. Aqua regia is a fuming liquid. Freshly prepared aqua regia is colorless, but it turns yellow, orange or red within seconds, so named by alchemists because it can dissolve the noble metals gold and platinum, though not all metals. == Preparation and decomposition == Upon mixing of concentrated hydrochloric acid and concentrated nitric acid, chemical reactions occur. These reactions result in the volatile products nitrosyl chloride and chlorine...

There, that is what I was looking for: the notion of "noble metals", akin to "noble gasses".

Noble metal

A noble metal is ordinarily regarded as a metallic chemical element that is generally resistant to corrosion and is usually found in nature in its raw form. Gold, platinum, and the other platinum group metals (ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium) are most often so classified. Silver, copper and mercury are less often to sometimes included as noble metals although each of these usually occurs in nature combined with sulfur. In more specialized fields of study and applications the number of elements counted as noble metals can be smaller or larger. In physics, there are only three noble...

I don't mess with fuming acids.

nope nope nope

RFNA (Red Fuming Nitric Acid) is a well-known rocket fuel, known for its extreme volatility.

In fact, stay the fuck away from all rocket fuels. Pro tip.

10:24 PM

@tchrist "self-attacked by radiation-generated ozone"

...started the next Terminator movie.