English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

M.A.R.

02:48

@Mitch AFAIK (very little) the biodegradability of what we already have is due to the nature of the monomers, and plasticization should often not be an issue. Problem is since you have a small range of monomers you can polymerize, you need chemists to do structural modifications in the monomers, and various modifications in the polymerization process, to create polymers with different properties and different applications. And this is why it's so damn expensive still.

Developing biotechnological processes to reduce cost and increase yield would require that the bacteria produce the polymers themselves, or some intermediate close enough to the final steps, not just monomers or dimers or such.

CowperKettle

04:26

The VPN that I installed yesterday has stopped working. Russia is getting better and better at blocking.

This morning I could only read the BBC website, but not Twitter.

CowperKettle

04:54

Yes. This time, nothing works.

I've checked out several new VPNs, even installed the Opera.

Good job, Putin's minions.

Oh. One of my VPNs suddenly started working.

Curious.

It was not working yesterday.

Does it somehow renew its list of servers?

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle the way I understand it, the VPN services are also in this arms race

@CowperKettle change protocols, most likely

CowperKettle

nods

M.A.R.

If it's just a server then it's just another address to be blocked

But it's sorta shaky anyway, I'd look for new VPNs

I've even used shady Android VPNs (still do so now)

CowperKettle

I'd look for a good radio receiver and try to catch foreign radio stations. It worked in the USSR.

M.A.R.

Radio, what's that. You old people and your old people stuff

CowperKettle

05:00

> From Friday, July 1, the German media company Deutsche Welle starts broadcasting on MW, which can be received in Russia and Belarus. Every evening from 21.00 to 21.30 Moscow time*, DW programs in Russian will be broadcast at a frequency of 1386kHz

Cerberus

05:15

@CowperKettle Oh, dear.

Better install as many VPNs as possible: once their websites have been blocked, and you have no other VPNs to get there, it will be difficult to even get new VPNs.

@M.A.R. Why are those shady?

CowperKettle

06:55

Exploring Solar Panel Efficiency Breakthroughs in 2022

►

Xanne

07:24

Wordle 390 3/6

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M.A.R.

08:29

@Cerberus I'm not saying all Android VPNs are shady of course. But some have really intrusive ads, like the ones that are not skippable and play sounds by default, even though you've muted the phone, some ads for fishy-sounding get-rich-quick schemes, and some ads probably insert some personally identifiable information using JS and track you across the web. The VPN server owner might also sell your data too. There's probably good overlap among the shadiness categories here.

Today it's gonna reach 39 degrees

Celsius, I wish it was imperial units

CowperKettle

09:15

@M.A.R. In Yekaterinburg, it's +32°C now

Vikas

09:35

@CowperKettle

CowperKettle

Via Andy Tran on Twitter. I wonder if it's correct. One must be cautious with such charts.

@Vikas Nice! ))

M.A.R.

Looks hairy

Well frankly I dunno who the nth chart is going to convince.

I think anyone that has the power to make a difference is either aware of the current situation in American healthcare and enjoying it, or, as for a small minority of such people, aware of the current situation and struggling in taking baby steps towards solving it

Each party is going to hate the other party's plan, and so will supporters of each party. (And of course only one party might come up with something substantial) Such fundamental issues are not treatable while America is so polarized at the moment, I think.

As for the chart itself, I think America is more diverse than any of those other countries, and a small, neglected portion of the population might be responsible for a huge part of why the chart looks the way it does

How are the life expectancy charts for Hispanic and Black populations?

Robusto

12:37

@M.A.R. I think you mean Fahrenheit.

@CowperKettle The firearms expenditure in the US has an inverse relationship to population health.

Although I will point out that that is what we like to call a "whoopee chart." The Y axis shows only ages 70 to 84. That makes the difference between lowest and highest look like 45%, not the actual percentage (~5).

Halve the Y-axis delta again and the entire US population would appear to be dead already.

But I think the difference can be summed up this way: expensive health care, bad eating habits, firearms, and poverty of large sections (mainly people of color) of the populace.

#Worldle #174 1/6 (100%)
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https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

This one was another gimme.

_________________
Wordle 390 3/6

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And that one fell right down as well.

CowperKettle

13:05

@Robusto I thought there was something fishy with it! I should abstain from picking up such charts.

#Worldle #174 1/6 (100%)
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https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

Mitch

13:20

@M.A.R. and once you get your pharmacy, you'll have all the equipment to set up a little side hustle producing industrial bioplastic.

user4539917

Breaking bad is where the money's at.

Mitch

@CowperKettle Of course there's all sorts of skepticism one should have when reading charts, where the data comes from, how the chart is made (Rob's point about the y-axis, etc etc). But this is a chart where I've seen past (only up to 2010 or only up to 2014), or other subsets of countries and they all seem to come from the same data set.

user4539917

worth a look

😁

Mitch

13:41

There's a lot of controversy in dataviz about whether/when to crop the y-axis. Usually you should show it all (otherwise it might be misleading (intentionally or not). But in this case there is a big difference between US and other developed nations and zooming in doesn't make the difference happen.

As to explanation we can all speculate but it is still a real phenomenon, another sad example of American exceptionalism

Cerberus

13:57

@CowperKettle This matches what I know about the subject, from news articles and reports by the WHO/OECD.

Robusto

14:39

@Mitch Except there is not as big a difference as is suggested by the zooming. The impression it gives is about an order of magnitude different.

Either way, those who disapprove of the US will cluck-cluck, and those who blindly defend it will doubt there is a difference or seek to minimize it. I don't care either way. I know my country, warts and all, and I just wish it were better.

Oh, and by the way, I do love my country, warts and all. And still I wish it were better.

M.A.R.

15:11

@Mitch I was gonna mention this. As long as people are on the same page that we plot data to specifically magnify what we want to see and analyze, and the differences are smaller than the plot suggests, this is a pretty valid way of showing data

On the other hand, the general populace is so used to exaggerations and oversimplifications that a more responsible way of showing the data would be underwhelming for most people, serving the opposite site in the Boolean framework of American politics

@Mitch well, about that

It turns out university faculty understandably cannot own community pharmacies. There are clear workarounds for this, they own the place, show up a minimum number of times, and let another pharmacist run the place. I don't even know if it's unethical or anything.

Robusto

Wordle (ES) #189 4/6

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https://wordle.danielfrg.com/

M.A.R.

What I'm saying is, in one of my future bouts of idealism, I might decide never to own one, but to give away myself to . . . I dunno, something. Hopefully some juicy groundbreaking research on immunosuppressive drugs. Because I don't like these ones at all.

Robusto

@M.A.R. Too many side effects?

Mitch

@M.A.R. Sometimes small differences are meaningful, especially when comparing averages over millions of instances

Sometimes large differences are not meaningful, like the brownian motion of daily stock indexes.

judgement is needed

Robusto

15:27

For me, using a magnified difference is the same as using all caps (and an exclamation point) in a YouTube title: "You will be SHOCKED by this new study!"

M.A.R.

@Robusto A part of every immunosuppressive drug regimen for the serious stuff (dangerous autoimmune diseases, solid organ transplantation etc.) is cytotoxic drugs. We need to come up with more and more specific agents that stop the process we don't want to happen, with minimal effects elsewhere

Mitch

@M.A.R. while you're creating new pharmaceuticals, like for curing stupidity and narcissism, on the side have a little vat boiling for biodegradable plastics. maybe sourced from cattle-methane?

Robusto

@M.A.R. In layman's terms; only kill the cells we want killed?

M.A.R.

Not some ballistic missile that cripples the immune system almost entirely and hampers growth and repair everywhere else too

Mitch

@Robusto Yes, lots of people use it in a motivated (and unsupportable) manner.

M.A.R.

15:29

@Robusto Not kill, just prevent the specific harmful inflammatory reaction that makes the joints ache, the skin die, or the transplant organ to be rejected

And we're only figuring out what those specific conditions are

Mitch

OK here's a half serious question: when people have their head cryogenically frozen... WHAT ARE THEY THINKING?

Robusto

@Mitch What have they got to lose? Oh, their heads.

Mitch

I mean 1) why just the head, why not try it with the whole body?

Do they want to save money?

M.A.R.

I'd be really disappointed if I do that and then thaw and NOT see myself on a spaceship to some exciting magical place

Robusto

Reincarnation on the cheap!

Mitch

15:31

you know because the head just by itself will be easier to freeze, less liquid nitrogen over time to pay for?

Robusto

@M.A.R. If they ever do use your cryogenically frozen head, you may be sure it will be because the brain tissue will be valuable for some other purpose.

M.A.R.

Road trip to Earth2 on Andromeda! Imagine the fun

Mitch

2) do you want a guillotine style removal or samurai sword? Maybe that's the appeal?

M.A.R.

We'll eat lots of chips and watch lots of movies before we get there

Robusto

And as far as sex goes, you can only give ... head.

M.A.R.

15:33

OK, are we coming up with head puns

Mitch

But anyway, there's a whole bunch of tendons and muscles and arteries and shit to reconnect.

M.A.R.

These people are hardheads, no changing their minds

Mitch

I'm trying to think this through

Robusto

@Mitch There's a whole lotta shit to reconnect with a heart transplant, but people still try that.

Mitch

They're very headstrong

Robusto

15:35

@M.A.R. Railing against puns? You of all people should be enjoying the punishment.

Mitch

@Robusto Good point. But to counter that, it's really hard (impossible as of yet?) to reconnect a hand, and there's a lot less going on there.

M.A.R.

@Mitch Well, main issue is perfusion. As soon as the brain comes alive, supposing that it does, it's gonna need that sweet glucose. And most brain cells don't store any at all.

Vikas

#Worldle #174 1/6 (100%)
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https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

M.A.R.

So how do you thaw the brain while doing it

Mitch

@M.A.R. oh I'm totally avoiding the issue of freezer burn

M.A.R.

15:36

Uh, can you freeze dry a head? I'm very skeptical of that

Robusto

What if you were miraculously revived five centuries from now, hoping for a cure for your pancreatic cancer, only to find that nobody even knew what that was anymore?

M.A.R.

While freeze drying, you add all this DMSO, so the cells don't die when the water freezes and the ice expands

Mitch

IN other news there was a very clever bonus round in pub trivia last night... Figure out ten movie names given the title in Esperanto (and a main actor in it).

M.A.R.

Aha

I don't have an inkling of Esperanto so I can't even show my ignorance by making up Esperanto words

Mitch

For example "Malhela kavaliro leviĝas (Christian Bale)"

no fair using google translate

in the sense that that is exactly what the writers of the question used.

M.A.R.

15:40

Something something, floats?

Mitch

@M.A.R. It's like this weird mix of Romance and Germanic and Slavic

M.A.R.

The Dark Knight Rises?

Mitch

@M.A.R. Close!

@M.A.R. haha! Yes!

M.A.R.

Well it helps that it's presumably three-ish words

Mitch

The trick is to go through the movies of the actor (in your head) and see if the title sorta matches the romance/Germanic/Slavic roots

M.A.R.

15:41

The Prestige, nope. The machinist, nope. American Psycho, would have probably been obvious

Mitch

@M.A.R. Exactly the right strategy

M.A.R.

I'm a genius

Do not mess with the Plasticmaster

Robusto

Can you repeat that in Esperanto, please? I didn't quite catch that.

M.A.R.

Valhalla Cavalier levigates. Si.

Robusto

Ĉu vi povas ripetition en Esperanto, mi petas?

Mitch

15:44

or you could say "kavalire... that's obviously something to do with a horse (caballo)... is it a ... 'horseman'? A bad (mal) horseman? is that a ... knight? I don't know of any movies with Christian Bale and knights... forget it that's stupid"

Robusto

Stupid Google Translate can't even keep words from falling apart.

M.A.R.

@Mitch You were going so well

Anyway my only experience with pub trivia quizzes is from Detectorists, and they didn't paint them in good light

Doesn't help that astronomy vs. astrology is also a pet peeve of mine

Mitch

@M.A.R. I have no idea what a detectorist beyond possibly it detecting something.

@M.A.R. haha its the opposite of what it should be

M.A.R.

@Mitch Oh it was this cozy little British TV show about metal detector-ists

Mitch

Oh

It's exciting when they find something that's not a button

like two buttons

or a nail

I could use that

M.A.R.

15:50

Well it was nice. Until it was damnably boring.

Mitch

put it in my nail collection

just in case

M.A.R.

The first season was great. Watching a bunch of 40-year olds moping around after all the other intense things I tend to watch was refreshing. Until they rehashed the plot. Twice.

I'm sweating here like a

Sweaty person.

Mitch

When in a hot place, do like the other hot people.

Cerberus

Undress?

jlliagre

16:16

#Worldle #174 2/6 (100%)
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https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

Oh, I drilled a hole in the globe by inadvertence ;-)

Wordle 390 5/6

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Mitch

16:57

@Cerberus OMG. Just stand in front of an open refrigerator.

Guess the Esperanto title of a movie @Cerberus @CowperKettle @Robusto @tchrist @M.A.R. @Xanne @FaheemMitha @jlliagre @Vikas @user4539917 @Lambie @forest @Jolenealaska @nvz

CowperKettle

17:35

1

Q: What is the logic behind "I am X years old"?

In most languages (I know of), people say their age with a construction like I have X years. In English, however, you say how old you are instead. So I'm curious about what is it about the logic of English that makes this sound more natural than I have X years. All I can find is that "this is jus...

Cerberus

17:47

@Mitch I know nothing about films.

Wouldn't know any of those actors.

@M.A.R. Ah, that sounds pretty terrible.

And you can't just input the VPN info (server, password and such) into a generic VPN application?

Mitch

@Cerberus But I bet you could decipher the Esperanto and maybe match some of that to names of movies you may have heard of.

Cerberus

I have heard of hardly any movies.

Certainly extremely few Hollywood ones, which such things are usually about.

M.A.R.

19:07

Well, I did go for a jog, and I feel like what sausage must feel like after being microwaved

@Cerberus Hardly any is as good genre as any

@Mitch so how does this work? We email the answers to you or something

And who the heck is Jon Cryer

@Cerberus I probably can, haven't bothered with it yet

Cerberus

@M.A.R. Genre?

They have hardly any genre?

@M.A.R. OK.

Mitch

@M.A.R. He's that guy in that movie where

Oh dude... I see what you're trying to get me to do

@M.A.R. Microwave sausages are sentient?

OK

So how -do- they feel?

a little oily?

@Cerberus You have consciously avoided participating in modern world culture.

Are you some kind of nut?

You need to watch more TV

I suggest you start with...

Gunsmoke

Then move on to ...

The Mary Tyler Moore Show

maybe a little Barney

Robusto

19:25

1) Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels
2) ???
3) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
4) ???
5) Little Miss Sunshine
6) Perfect Pitch
7) ???
8) The Dark Knight Rises (You already revealed this one)
9) Pretty in Pink
0) The Power of the Dog

Mitch

All those that you filled in look right

Notice how they are all very literal

Robusto

Yes

Mitch

(because the question maker google translated the Engish)

Robusto

So I imagine.

Who needs Esperanto, though? Everyone already speaks English, sort of.

Mitch

From just this small set I figure that google translate wasn't trained on much, the vocab is one thing but it's really 'take the English and replace with Esperanto words'

which is not how Esperanto works.

But it is neat how it is a jumble of Romance, Germanic, and Slavic

er... maybe not so much Slavic (if any)

Robusto

19:34

@Mitch Well, you're not going to get GT to give you something a native speaker would produce, especially since there are none of those.

Mitch

I've heard that there are some L1 Esperanto speakers. I mean their parents are obviously weirdos.

Esperanto

Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communication, or "the international language" (la lingvo internacia). Zamenhof first described the language in Dr. Esperanto's International Language (Esperanto: Unua Libro), which he published under the pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto. Early adopters of the language liked the name Esperanto and soon used it to describe his language. The word esperanto translates into English...

Robusto

You're Doing it Wrong: Rebooting! Find out why!

►

Mitch

> Users Native: approximately one thousand or more (2011)[3]

Robusto

@Mitch Name one.

> Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language.

Hahahaha.

Mitch

> Harald Haarmann, Eta leksikono pri lingvoj, 2011, archive date March 4, 2016: Esperanto … estas lernata ankaŭ de pluraj miloj da homoj en la mondo kiel gepatra lingvo. ("Esperanto has also been learned by several thousand people in the world as a mother tongue.")

Robusto

19:41

Never mind, I don't plan to call them.

Mitch

They wouldn't answer anyway, too busy making lace curtains out of mouse hair or etching a bas-relief Mona Lisa on an integrated chip.

which I commend heartily

I don't have time for such frivolities.

Robusto

I'd buy that for a dollar.

Mitch

Since I'm building a toothpick rollercoaster.

each toothpick I've handcrafted from a single sequoia

Robusto

How thrifty of you.

Mitch

You might wonder why I don't just carve the rollercoaster out directly from a slab of sequoia.

Pfft. Where's the fun in that?

Oh...the rollercoaster is in miniature, only 5 feet across.

I mean that's an important detail.

I'm not crazy

Robusto

19:46

Whoa, let's not spout unsupportable claims.

Robusto

19:57

For any watchers of Better Cal Saul, this scene was filmed at La Limonata coffee shop. My bike club's members often go there for coffee breaks on rides.

@tchrist: Why Perl is still relevant in 2022. Though you've probably seen it already.

Not that you need to be told, mind.

tchrist

20:31

@Robusto Not that you need to bet old minds.

Robusto

20:51

Great sky viewed from the Sandía crest today. Note rainshower in distance.

Nice to see it so green.

Cerberus

21:12

@Mitch No, I just generally dislike commercial mass culture. It is something to be looked down on, even though I occasionally partake in it. Like fast food. It's bad but, oh, well.

Xanne

22:06

@M.A.R. >Before the pandemic, life expectancy for U.S. Hispanics was about 81.5 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For whites and Asians, life expectancy was around 79 years, and for Blacks it was around 76 years. Those numbers have fallen considerably during the pandemic, however.

@M.A.R. The longer life expectancy for Hispanics has puzzled researchers, since Hispanics are have average incomes below whites and presumably less access to health care than higher income and more fully employed whites.

Cerberus

@Xanne Hmm any hypotheses?

forest

Could it be genetics?

Cerberus

Possibly?

Then again, people in East Asia generally live much longer than people of the same descent in America.

Xanne

22:39

>
There are various studies with more or less tortured data. Some try to separate oigins in Mexico, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. But Hispanic us an ethnicity, not a racial designation, and one might well ask how anyone knows. One hypothesis is diet. Another is fitness: migrants are fitter than natives, and the unfit tend to go back home. >Another manages to find differences only for women. However, Hispanics lost several years of expected longevity with Covid, for whatever reason. I don’t know whrther that contonues.

Xanne

22:58

Hispanic paradox

The Hispanic paradox is an epidemiological finding that Hispanic Americans tend to have health outcomes that "paradoxically" are comparable to, or in some cases better than, those of their U.S. non-Hispanic White counterparts, even though Hispanics have lower average income and education. Low socioeconomic status is almost universally associated with worse population health and higher death rates everywhere in the world. The paradox usually refers in particular to low mortality among Hispanics in the United States relative to non-Hispanic Whites. According to the Center for Disease Control's 2015...

Cerberus

23:42

One always wonder how many factors they have corrected for.

It is quite possible that they should have forgotten about something obvious and uninteresting.

E.g. I'm sure they will have corrected for age, but something like that can skew the figures.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…