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12:08 AM
@tchrist Hmm, not really. It's below Lake Forest, below Highwood. You'll hit Gurnee first on the tri-state, then Libertyville (or Rondout), Bannockburn, etc., before you get abreast of Highland Park.
 
@Robusto That sounds right. "Like the first" meant pretty quick. Gurney certainly is the bordering one.
 
@tchrist Hehe, you'll have to learn to spell Gurnee better. It's not a hospital transport. ;)
 
 
2 hours later…
2:25 AM
@Cerberus isn't that amateur numbers?
I'm pretty sure there are dozens of older trees around the world
And don't some tree species even have an average lifespan that long?
> Sarv-e Abarkuh is one of the natural wonders of the world. It is the world's third oldest tree after a Great Basin bristlecone pine (5,062 years old) and Methuselah (4,845 years old). This oldest living heritage of Iran is about 28 meters high and 11.5 meters wide at its trunk.
 
@M.A.R. What do you mean by amateur?
It's true because Wikipaedia says this is an estimate.
@M.A.R. Many, many more than thousands.
 
Isn't carbon-dating accurate enough? I wouldn't know
 
Oaks are by no means amongst the longest-living species of trees.
@M.A.R. Probably nobody has bothered.
Or he would have put it on Wikipaedia.
 
utters a silent prayer to Wikipedia gods
Thousands of years old . . . I wonder if they have some form of consciousness and whether time moves slower for them, or something
They're probably really bored
 
Consciousness seems far fetched.
As does boredom.
They are nothing like us.
Sarv-e Abarkuh looks very cool, though.
> Prometheus (recorded as WPN-114) was the oldest known non-clonal organism, a Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) tree growing near the tree line on Wheeler Peak in eastern Nevada, United States.

The tree, which was at least 4,862 years old and possibly more than 5,000, was cut down in 1964 by a graduate student and United States Forest Service personnel for research purposes.[1] Those involved did not know of its world-record age before the cutting, but the circumstances and decision-making process remain controversial.
 
2:40 AM
This is a list of the oldest-known trees, as reported in reliable sources. Definitions of what constitutes an individual tree vary. In addition, tree ages are derived from a variety of sources, including documented "tree-ring" (dendrochronological) count core samples, and from estimates. For these reasons, this article presents three lists of "oldest trees," each using varying criteria. There are three tables of trees, which are listed by age and species. The first table includes trees for which a minimum age has been directly determined, either through counting or cross-referencing tree rings...
 
> In 2010, a reportedly living bristlecone pine in California's White Mountains was measured by Tom Harlan to be 5062 years old. This pine has not been found after Harlan's death in 2013, and its core has not been located at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research.[5]
 
don't believe everything in wikipedia
 
Word of the day: GalSafe pigs
 
or if it bothers you that much write your own truth
@CowperKettle Pigs safe for gals?
 
No. They lack an epitope that evokes allergy to meat in humans
 
2:42 AM
Isn't there some 11.000 year old aspen grove (because it propagates by underground shoots)?
 
> Alpha-gal syndrome (AGS) (also called alpha-gal allergy, red meat allergy, or tick bite meat allergy) is a serious, potentially life-threatening allergic reaction.
 
also some desert shrub that is 11000 years old?
My questions turn into facts if you repeat them enough
@CowperKettle oh that... I only just heard of that.
we should probably not be eating meat anyway
This is a list of the longest-living biological organisms: the individual(s) (or in some instances, clones) of a species with the longest natural maximum lifespans. For a given species, such a designation may include: The oldest known individual(s) that are currently alive, with verified ages. Verified individual record holders, such as the longest-lived human, Jeanne Louise Calment, or the longest-lived domestic cat, Creme Puff.The definition of "longest-living" used in this article considers only the observed or estimated length of an individual organism's natural lifespan – that is, the duration...
some sea grass
some sponge
I mean those guys aren't even trying and they live a thousand years
 
@Mitch Sure, but no part of it is old.
It renews itself.
 
@Cerberus ???
like the ship of theseus?
they share the same space as the original?
 
You may be old, but your hair is not.
Now imagine if you were all hair and nails.
 
2:50 AM
@Cerberus OK...
ew
 
Except living hair and living nails.
 
I stopped doing that
 
Does that make it better?
 
I suppose
 
So you may be old, but no part of you is old.
 
2:51 AM
But that's the case for absolutely every living thing
 
The river is old, but none of its water is.
@Mitch It depends on what scale you look at.
 
an aspen isn't all hair and fingernails
You never step in the same river twice
I have though
 
I praesume what they want, in this context, is a shape with living tree-fibres and stuff that isn't all new tissue/material.
 
It was a dry river though
more of a river bed
 
I apologise for the terminology...
 
2:53 AM
@Cerberus Apology gladly accepted
 
Phew.
 
I knew you'd feel relieved
 
I wouldn't know how to describe tree parts.
 
there's bark
and leaves
and
yep that's it
that's all I've got
roots?
what are the trunk and branches made of?
xylem and phloem
is wood dead?
 
Some is; some isn't.
Dead wood is easily snapped.
Unless it's thick.
Living wood bends to some degree.
> Some of Africa’s oldest and biggest baobab trees have abruptly died, wholly or in part, in the past decade, according to researchers.

The trees, aged between 1,100 and 2,500 years and in some cases as wide as a bus is long, may have fallen victim to climate change, the team speculated.

“We report that nine of the 13 oldest … individuals have died, or at least their oldest parts/stems have collapsed and died, over the past 12 years,” they wrote in the scientific journal Nature Plants, describing “an event of an unprecedented magnitude”.
 
2:58 AM
They died out of protest
the state of the world,
They should follow our advice and stop seeing the news
 
Tree with golden supports.
At least they look golden?
The oldest tree with a known date of planting.
 
We had a dogwood tree as a kid and I kept putting things under it to prop it up.
Dogwoods are pretty scrawny for trees
They don't grow straight up and they get about as thick as your thigh, so they don't get very big, like maybe 7 meters tall at best
maybe a 50 year life span?
Cornus florida, the flowering dogwood, is a species of flowering tree in the family Cornaceae native to eastern North America and northern Mexico. An endemic population once spanned from southernmost coastal Maine south to northern Florida and west to the Mississippi River. The tree is commonly planted as an ornamental in residential and public areas because of its showy bracts and interesting bark structure. == Classification == The flowering dogwood is usually included in the dogwood genus Cornus as Cornus florida L., although it is sometimes treated in a separate genus as Benthamidia florida...
not too far off - at biggest ~30 cm thick (two thighs?), 10-13 m high, 80 years
 
 
1 hour later…
4:15 AM
Word of the day: poilu
> "Then I can only say: My sympathies are with the French poilu. What he is fighting for he does not know." (Adolf Hitler)
Poilu (; French: [pwaly]) is an informal term for a late 18th century–early 20th century French infantryman, meaning, literally, hairy one. It is still widely used as a term of endearment for the French infantry of World War I. The word carries the sense of the infantryman's typically rustic, agricultural background. Bushy moustaches were often worn. The poilu was particularly known for his love of pinard, his ration of cheap wine. The image of the dogged, bearded French soldier was widely used in propaganda and war memorials. The stereotype of the Poilu was of bravery and endurance, but not...
 
 
2 hours later…
5:55 AM
I always wondered what this word meant, and finally decided to find out.
 
6:08 AM
A theater in Nizhny Novgorod has staged a play about the Dulles' Plan, a nonexistent plan by the US to destroy the USSR through "cultural corruption". twitter.com/adagamov/status/1543959256512270336
The Dulles' plan or the Dulles Doctrine (Russian: План Даллеса or Доктрина Даллеса) is the central document of a conspiracy theory, according to which the CIA chief Allen Dulles had developed a plan for the United States to destroy the Soviet Union during the Cold War by secretly corrupting the cultural heritage and moral values of the Soviet nation. The plan was first published in Russia shortly after the dissolution of the USSR and was often quoted by prominent Russian politicians, journalists, and writers. The text originates from a work of fiction, a 1971 novel The Eternal Call (Russian: Вечный...
 
6:58 AM
@Robusto It suffices to say that Musk is an irresponsible nutcase, in my opinion.
3
When he's not shilling cryptocurrencies, he's making idiotic statements.
 
 
6 hours later…
1:01 PM
@FaheemMitha Agreed.
 
@Robusto I was meaning to ask - do you do much programming? Alternatively, have you done much programming?
 
@FaheemMitha I'm retired now, but for the last 20 years of my career I was a programmer/developer.
 
@Robusto Oh. Any particular language? Or languages?
Or domain area?
 
@FaheemMitha Whatever I needed. I started as a front-end programmer, but worked into full-stack. I became a programmer because I got tired of programmers telling me what they couldn't do, and went full stack for the same reason.
 
@Robusto OK. Thank you for explaining.
 
1:17 PM
#Worldle #165 4/6 (100%)
🟩🟨⬜⬜⬜↗️
🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜↘️
🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜↙️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
This one was hard today.
But I should have known it.
___________
Wordle 381 3/6

⬜🟨🟨🟨⬜
⬜🟩⬜🟨🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
___________
Pretty simple .
 
1:31 PM
@FaheemMitha What kept me in it was the peace it brought me. Like doing puzzles all day, but being creative at the same time. There was stress at times, but nothing like what I had been doing before.
 
@Mitch Aww poor, silly tree.
> #Worldle #165 3/6 (100%)
🟩🟨⬜⬜⬜➡️
🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜↗️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
Why do countries often have a different shape from how I remember them, even a different orientation?
2
 
It's hard to remember shapes to several decimal places, especially when one distinctive shape reminds you of other countries having similar shapes.
 
1:51 PM
Right, but I also feel there is something unusual about the way the shapes are rendered in that game.
 
I think part of that may be due to relative size. Latvia is portrayed as the same size as Russia, for example.
 
Right, that may be one factor.
I think there may also be something about the smoothness of the borders, or the lack thereof.
 
@Cerberus I think it may be that the solid black contributes to what you're talking about. When you see a map view you see lowlands near coasts, mountains in the interior, deltas at the mouths of rivers, etc. The Worldle representation, solid black, tends to blockify the shape significantly.
 
#Worldle #165 X/6 (97%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨➡️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨⬆️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨↘️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨⬆️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨➡️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨↘️
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
 
2:20 PM
@Cerberus I've been thinking the same thing..."Hey that's not what I thought the country looked like" It could be the aspect ratio, or the color (solid black fill on white) instead of outline, the map projection (distortion that we're used to with mercator vs globe view). I'm leaning towards context, ie we usually see a country border with either very complicated internal images (roads or weather or such) or in the context of neighboring country shapes.
But yeah, I'm always thinking that they're stretched funny or rotated ever so slightly.
As far as islands go though, they can all go to hell.
 
Also, if you have always seen flat projections, especially Mercator, features can be smeared and deformed.
 
@Robusto But it's nice to know that we're not alone in sensing this. It could be a sign of common optical phenomena, or it could be a sign that we're all seeing a bug/miscalculation/blip in the way that site gets/manipulates country shapes.
Which is all to say that I came here for:
> Scientists have discovered a new type of polar bear. It can live in both the North and South poles, is prone to extreme mood swings and has shown interest in other bears of both genders.

It's a bi-polar bipolar bi polar bear
 
2:35 PM
@Mitch I can't bear it anymore. Please stop.
I just got a voicemail in Chinese: 总领馆通知您有重要通知,请进自己领导联系湖岸二接通领馆人员 (Google translate: "The consulate general informs you that there is an important notice, please enter your own leadership to contact the consulate staff.")
Obviously a wrong number. But the source was 212 area code (NYC), so I wonder if there was some kind of threat against Chinese citizens.
 
Could be a scam?
 
3:06 PM
Russia is slashing its RUB 150 bn space agency budget by cutting out RUB 21 bn in 2023. Across the board, a lot of lines in the 2023 budget have been slashed.
Only the defense spending in 2023 will increase a bit, by RUB 27 bn, and social support spendings moscowtimes.eu/2022/07/04/…
Industry development program will be reduced by RUB 200 bn over 3 years, despite the recent statements that Russia "must become self-sufficient" after the loss of many channels of import.
Scientific research and development, cut by RUB 150 bn over 3 years.
 
@Cerberus Yeah, but what could the scam be? It directs you to call the "consulate general" (China), which presumes a Chinese citizen and a knowledge of how to contact the consulate, so there is no special reply number to contact a scammer.
 
A fourth top-manager of Gazprom has just mysteriously died. This is odd.
 
@CowperKettle Must be a hazardous industry for managers.
 
Yes, must be it.
In the Bryansk region of Russia, three persons in masks attacked a military base, 45 km from the border with Ukraine. The police is looking for them now.
Over the whole Russia, there has been about a dozen cases when people threw Molotov cocktails in the windows of military commissariates (which are responsible for recruitment, conscription, and drafting of people into the army).
> The Russian government has ordered the Jewish Agency to cease all operations inside the country, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
This is odd. The agency was helping Jews to repatriate to Israel. Why put a pressure on it. There are very few Jews left in Russia, the majority have emigrated.
Tatyana Novikova, professor of the Belgorod University in Russia, wrote a comment in the social network VKontakte. "Let there always be sun! Let there always be sky!" For this crime, she was dismissed from the university, and a criminal case has been launched against her.
The line is a quote from an old Soviet antiwar song.
The October District court is preparing to hear her case.
How dare she quote an old song in such a time.
 
3:35 PM
#Worldle #165 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

Knowing it was hard but knowable was a hint!
 
This country looks like Darth Weider's helmet
#Worldle #165 X/6 (97%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨➡️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨↘️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨⬆️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨↘️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨➡️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨↘️
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
 
Wordle 381 4/6

🟨🟨⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜🟨🟨
⬜🟩⬜🟨🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
 
@jlliagre You're welcome!
 
@CowperKettle That's almost like saying you've found a way to help your next-door neighbors.
 
3:50 PM
@Robusto What were you doing before?
 
@FaheemMitha I was a creative director in advertising. It was when we started doing Web sites and the like, interactive stuff, that I saw the possibilities and got interested in the programming end of it.
 
4:02 PM
@Robusto I see. So web programming, then?
 
@FaheemMitha At first. But I quickly moved beyond that to create software that did other things. For example, a software synthesizer that accessed Apple's QuickTime plugin to port it to a visual keyboard that let the user play and record synthesized musical instruments of up to 8 or 16 tracks (I don't remember exactly).
Then there was also a tool that sampled colors in any visual image and translated those into values for reference, etc.
I also made a poker application that calculated the odds on any hand against any number of players, based on cards shown, etc.
This is a screenshot of the synth app.
Pretty good for the time, but very soon after that Apple came out with Garage Band and there were other solutions I couldn't compete with.
Besides, I was interested in the creation of the app, not its marketing.
This is a screenshot of the palette app, which let you examine and compare and save colors, etc.
Unnecessary if you had Photoshop, but a good tool for those of less than professional needs/interests.
 
 
1 hour later…
5:50 PM
Is there any better way to word this?
English is not my thing but...
 
@Robusto What year or years did you develop these? And what language(s) did you use?
@MathCubes Looks reasonable to me. An alternative would be "being treated by the management in a way that I would consider to be discrimination". I don't know if that is better. I also substituted "that" for "which". I don't know if that is better or more correct, but if feels more natural to me.
 
Well I am making this to collect signatures by my co workers because I am getting discrimated upon
 
@MathCubes "discriminated against". That one, I'm reasonably sure is standard. And sorry to hear that.
 
So how would you write it?
 
@MathCubes Write what?
 
5:57 PM
I (co worker name) have observed (my name) being treated in a way which I would .... by the company name .
 
@MathCubes I just made a suggestion above. It feels more natural to put the verb and the subject together and the modifier afterwards. At least to me. Assuming those are the correct terms. I'm illiterate about grammar. Do you want the complete sentence?
 
Yes
I am very bad at English lol
And if it goes to court it needs to be prefect
 
I ____(insert name here) have observed ____(insert name here) being treated by the management in a way that I would consider to be discriminatory.
@MathCubes You mean "perfect".
Perhaps others have better suggestions.
You could always post on the site. That's what it's there for.
 
Well it needs be done in the next hour because It is my day off and well I need to go to it
 
@MathCubes If it's important I wouldn't rush it. If you are concerned about the wording, ask for feedback. Maybe the whole note, or whatever it is. I'm not sure of the rules here, but take a look at the help, where it talks about what kinds of questions one can ask.
 
6:04 PM
How about that?
@FaheemMitha
 
@MathCubes That's worse, IMO.
 
Well atleast I tried
 
Try and keep it simple.
 
Would you opt for and I know I am doxing my own self here but I can not avoid it.
A) By the management of the Untied States Postal Service
or
B) By the management of USPS?
@FaheemMitha
 
@MathCubes You might as well go with the long form. Though it's "United", not "Untied".
But such details are surely best answered by a suitably qualified person?
In the legal sense, I mean.
 
6:14 PM
I miss type it
So you would choice to pick "discriminatory" over "discrimination"
?
 
@MathCubes Well, it's the adjectival form, so it seems more natural there. Though discrimination might be OK too. I'm no English expert.
And I was very poorly educated.
 
Well to me it chances the meaning to be less serve.
I do not know if it just
me
 
6:59 PM
@FaheemMitha Some in VB 6, some in Visual C++. Late '90s to 2005. I did a really extensive simulation of the entire EMC software, with sample data and the like, in C#. That was a beast to develop, mainly because it was on a very short fuse and I had to work 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, to meet the deadline.
 
@Robusto What does EMC stand for here?
 
Dell EMC (until 2016, EMC Corporation) is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Hopkinton, Massachusetts and Round Rock, Texas, United States. Dell EMC sells data storage, information security, virtualization, analytics, cloud computing and other products and services that enable organizations to store, manage, protect, and analyze data. Dell EMC's target markets include large companies and small- and medium-sized businesses across various vertical markets. The company's stock (as EMC Corporation) was added to the New York Stock Exchange on April 6, 1986, and was also listed on...
 
@Robusto So EMC was a corporation that was acquired by Dell? Not sure what you mean by simulation, though.
 
@FaheemMitha Something the sales people could use to demo the software for clients. It had to look and behave just like the real thing, in all its depth and glory. But it had to have a smaller footprint, small enough to fit on the laptops of the day, yet look just as robust as the entire suite.
 
@Robusto Oh. Sounds complicated.
 
7:09 PM
It was. Very.
 
If you were working on it alone, that sounds rough. I hope they paid you well.
Software is murder to work on if it's big. And you're doing it on your own.
 
They did. But they bitched about it nevertheless.
 
Not really a fan of C++. Though they seem to keep trying to improve it. Error messages seem to have improved a lot.
 
That was a trial balloon, enough to convince me that it was too much trouble to code in C++. But I got to know it, which helped me in other ways.
 
@Robusto Trial balloon?
 
7:13 PM
> n An idea or a plan advanced tentatively to test the reactions of other people.
In this case the other person was myself.
 
Ah yes, you said you used C#. That would have been easier than C++, I expect. Though I don't know C# at all.
@Robusto Ah. Not really familiar with that usage. Sounds vaguely familiar, though.
 
@FaheemMitha It is, and it's a better fit for me than VB, since it uses C syntax, which I like. It's also better than Java, which I hate. But in the same ballpark, I guess.
 
@Robusto I don't think any of those languages are particularly fun to write in. C++ certainly isn't.
 
It depends on what you're doing.
It also depends on what your employer is doing, if you have an employer.
It's a toolbox. If you're working for someone who uses certain dev software, that's what you use.
 
@Robusto I wrote a fair amount of C++, on and off. It never struck me as something one would actually want to use, unless you had very demanding memory and CPU requirements. And it's horribly inflexible and limiting, though they try to make it more flexible with all those extra features.
Java certainly didn't strike me as any better, though easier to write it. I don't know C # at all.
 
7:22 PM
@FaheemMitha I did it to prove to myself I could do it, because I was under the impression that you couldn't be a "real" programmer unless you could manage your own memory, etc.
 
Left to myself I tend to use Python, though of course it has its own problems.
 
But that was early in my programming adventure.
 
@Robusto I don't think that's true. Though it doesn't hurt to know how to do it.
 
@FaheemMitha I like Python. It's simple but powerful.
@FaheemMitha No, of course it isn't true. But it was a perception I had, since I was coming from a completely different field.
 
The problem with Python is that because you can't lean on strong static typing, it's very easy to have incorrect and dead code. So you need to do a lot of testing, which can be a real pain for larger systems. And of course systems grow exponentially with size. But it's much more flexible. So that's the tradeoff.
@Robusto Yes. I see.
Mercurial is written in Python, for example.
In C++ you can use RAII, at least. Which isn't great, but is better than the C type of extremely manual memory management.
 
7:25 PM
@FaheemMitha Yeah, I mainly use it to do things I need for my own purposes.
 
@Robusto Me too.
 
@FaheemMitha I like Mercurial. In fact, it's what I use for my own versioning. For me it's just less of a hassle than git.
 
A language with strong static typing does have advantages for larger systems. Helps keep things in shape.
@Robusto Interesting. I rarely meet people who use Mercurial. Are you using the Evolve/Topics extension yet? If you aren't you should.
I was a Mercurial early adopter. I've been using it since February 2006. At that time it was around 10 months old.
So I guess 16 years now? How time flies.
 
@FaheemMitha Yes. But I'm not part of anything really big, so I don't care about that. What I need is to be able to prototype rapidly and refine up to a satisfactory point.
 
@Robusto Sure, I understand.
 
7:29 PM
@FaheemMitha I will look into that. Is that recent? The last place I worked at that used Mercurial was 12 years ago, and I had to use git after that. So when I retired I just went with my old Mercurial tools.
 
@Robusto It's not very recent, no. But it only became usable a few years ago. But it's really very useful. But not a lot of documentation on it. Or topics.
You could look at Jordi's 2014 presentation - youtube.com/watch?v=4OlDm3akbqg
It doesn't cover Topics, though.
 
I'll look at it.
 
Evolve+topics probably qualify as killer features.
But few people use it. It just started getting hits on Stackoverflow recently.
I see SO now has a tag, but it's probably fairly new. stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/mercurial-evolve
Only one question tagged so far.
 
 
1 hour later…
8:47 PM
Wordle (ES) #180 5/6

⬜🟩🟨⬜⬜
⬜🟩⬜🟨⬜
⬜🟩🟨⬜🟩
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

https://wordle.danielfrg.com/
 
8:57 PM
The more I learn about Qatar the less I wanna watch the fight on August 20.
 
What about the FIFA World Cup? Players? Players gonna play, play, play, play, play
And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate (haters gonna hate)
Baby, I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off. (Taylor Swift) I'm worried the players will collapse in the heat....
 
Yeah, the world cup is a write-off for me.
It really doesn't matter who wins on August 20. Fury can pound either of them.
 
Well, since I'm half-Brazilian, it makes me sad.
 
Brazil had its golden era of soccer, just be happy with that.
Not seeing Italy for 8 years is weird.
weird sad
rip
:(
 
10:06 PM
@Lambie you had me after the third 'hate'
 
@Mitch I know you know the answer to this. Why do I get a HORRIBLE donking sound when someone answers me on any chat? It has to be the worst effing sound in the world. Is there anyway to stop it?? Thanks.
It defies description. :)
 
Click on the little speaker in the upper right of your screen.
^
I'll let Mitch answer "why"
 

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