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00:00
Those fungible neural networks.
Wow, amazingly close.
She's 1,112 votes ahead, but there are 15 times that many votes yet to count.
I read she ought to have performed way better considering her opponent, and if she wins like so it's symbolically a loss in a way.
The people are truly divided on this.
00:04
Word of 5 a.m.: to buss (to give a fleeting kiss)
@solastalgienitsyne That's exactly what all the Republicans are saying. Even if they win either chamber, it feels like a loss.
Many Republicans significantly underperformed, and that means something.
Maybe.
lolll
How long till all the votes are counted?
Eternity.
At least we'll know the answer by Christmas. It feels so eighteenth-century.
Agreed.
00:09
> First, Colorado gives voters until Nov. 16, in what is known as the cure period, to fix errors or signature discrepancies that could result in their ballot being rejected. That deadline is the same for overseas voters and members of the military to return ballots.

After that, the secretary of state’s office selects at least one statewide contest and at least one contest in each county to audit, based on input from its own staff and from Democratic and Republican county clerks. The secretary of state, Jena Griswold, a Democrat who has tussled with election deniers, was re-elected on Tuesd
They'll finish counting next week some time. But that's not necessarily going to be dispositive.
So total a month before they have to return the results etc. In some cases the count may go on for weeks still.
It's a great great democracy, despite everything.
> Maricopa County in Arizona said it would release more results at 8 p.m. local time, which could provide some clarity on the Senate race there. Counting continues in Nevada, too. On the House side, the picture looks better for Republicans.
Arizona is on Mountain Time, so that's within the next hour in a couple hours or so.
And then they'll be all the demands for a recount. And finally, a re-storming of the the Capitol on Jan6th.
Yes and no, not this time.
Maybe next.
Arizona has only new 80k votes to report, and 300k to go.
@Mitch Hmm do you think this will be beneficial?
00:15
manning the ramparts, taking over airports
The ramparts are already male.
> Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat, has pulled within 1,000 votes of the Republican candidate, Adam Laxalt, in Nevada after winning a new batch of ballots from Clark County by breakdown of 63 percent to 33 percent. With tens of thousands of heavily Democratic mail ballots remaining to be counted, the results put Democrats closer to retaining control of the U.S. Senate.
> A city spell-bound under the aging sun,
Music my rampart, and my only one.
(Millay)
00:28
Word of the minute: to cock a snook
00:43
@Robusto In Dutch, corpse/lich is lijk, exactly the same as the suffix.
2
@CowperKettle I saw that. It seems important.
White tie is frak in Russian and rokkostuum in Dutch
Frak is from French frac, which is from English frock. Whew.
@CowperKettle Meaning tuxedo or papillon/farfalla/mariposa/Schmetterling?
The frock suggests the funny tailed thing you wear with a white-tie tuxedo event.
@tchrist No, tuxedo is black tie
> Following the social changes after the First World War and especially with the counterculture of the 1960s, white tie was increasingly replaced by black tie as default evening wear for more formal events.
The counterculture of the 1960s brought us Frank Zappa and black tie.
@CowperKettle This is why the White House never sends me any dinner invites. It knows I don't know formal fashion.
00:56
Word of 6 a.m.: shifting dullness
@CowperKettle This is what happens when anybody can buy themselves a blue check mark for eight bucks a month!
01:17
Timothy David Snyder (born August 18, 1969) is an American historian specializing in the modern history of Central and Eastern Europe, who is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. He has written several books, including the best-sellers Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin and On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. An expert on the Holocaust, Snyder is on the Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations...
He has a series of video lectures on the history of Ukraine on YouTube
French word of the day: Queue-de-pie (lit. magpie-tail): White tie. A black tie is called un smoking in French. White ties used to be called frocs in the past but nowadays un froc is a slang word for "pants".
01:36
@jlliagre It's смокинг in Russian too ))
Oh, so queue is French.
Cognate with coda:
In music, a coda ([ˈkoːda]) (Italian for "tail", plural code) is a passage that brings a piece (or a movement) to an end. It may be as simple as a few measures, or as complex as an entire section. == In classical music == The presence of a coda as a structural element in a movement is especially clear in works written in particular musical forms. Codas were commonly used in both sonata form and variation movements during the Classical era. In a sonata form movement, the recapitulation section will, in general, follow the exposition in its thematic content, while adhering to the home key. The...
I heard "coda" in a song by Vyssotsky. I never ever came across it anywhere else.
Now I know what it means.
02:38
Fresh Soloviev today.
uh oh, spaghettio
03:08
Such good will.
But it's fine if that's what they want to believe.
 
1 hour later…
04:12
Woman's first and second husband enlisted together, died just days after being sent to the front. Daughter left without a father and a stepfather.
They were friends.
And it's all so totally pointless.
One had his own construction business, the other was a security guard
 
1 hour later…
05:44
When my dad was born, it was 2.5 billion.
When I was born, it was 4.3 billion.
It has doubled during my life.
Catastrophe in the making.
06:06
It's not so much the total number that matters.
At any rate, it will top off in a few decades.
Or so it is projected.
06:35
Perhaps, coV is the beginning of that "topping off."
Along with the various "special operations" popping up.
Nah, those numbers aren't large enough. And most of those people were older.
Rather, the reproduction rate in pour countries is projected to drop.
Indeed, poor countries is where the most aggressive competition occurs for limited resources.
Wait, I thought the world population was on the decline? Did I dream that?
I have these super weird abstract dreams where my mind presents a new piece of information as fact
China reported a decline in their population growth...
07:03
Nov 9 at 3:38, by CowperKettle
user image
07:42
@Cerberus Yes, but still it awes me. Such huge numbers. I cannot even visualize it ))
It's like 5000 cities the size of Yekaterinburg.
Yekaterinburg is 15 km in diameter, roughly speaking.
So... multiplying, we obtain 15*5000 = 75 000 km.
Seventy five thousand kilometers of urban terrain, in length.
If we put one city just next to other.
The Earth's circumference at the equator is 40 000 km. So it's like two urban "ribbons" girding the Earth at mid-latitudes.
And when my dad was born, it was 4 times less. Just half a single urban "ribbon" with a width of 15 km.
The place where I live is considered part of the central district, and 100 years ago it was beyond the city limits
Swamps and cemeteries.
@CowperKettle Sir, what do you think what kind of degrees do World Bank, IMF seek when they recruit new guys?
@ConGovDeIn I've no idea
07:58
Word of the hour: bread loafing
Bread loafing is a common method of processing surgical specimens for histopathology. The process involves cutting the specimen into 3 or more sections. The cut sections are mounted by embedding in paraffin or frozen medium. The cut edge is then thinly sliced with a microtome or a cryostat. The thin slices are then mounted on a glass slide, stained, and covered with another layer of glass. This method is used to determine the negative resection margin for skin tumors, and is also known as POMA (Post Operative Margin Assessment as referred to by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network). It has...
@Cerberus Is University of Utrecht considered to be one of the best universities in Netherlands?
@Xanne Nice! Reminded me of catloaf
Catloaf (also spelled as cat loaf and sometimes known as hovercat and tugboat) is an internet phenomenon and term used to describe a domestic cat's sitting position in which its paws and tail are tucked under the body, forming a loaf-like shape. A speculation for the sitting position indicated that the cat is relaxed and feels unthreatened, and therefore has no need to sit in a position where it would have to attack. Another potential reason for this sitting position is for the cat to maintain a comfortable body temperature without having to move.There is no clear date for when the word catloaf...
08:14
On our local webforum, pro-Putin users discuss the Special Operation
> "It feels like the main task of the USA is to annihilate as many Slavic people as possible. Belarusians, Russians, Ukrainians. The more the better. We as a People are stuck as a thorn in their side".
Weird.
@Xanne that's what they thought of while they were butchering purple and red tissue?
This confirms my suspicions that histologists and anatomists have issues.
@CowperKettle do they think Ukraine started the special operation?
08:36
Wordle 511 4/6

🟨🟨⬜⬜🟨
⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩
🟨🟨🟨⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in answer, mostly punctuation marks in answer (123): Word for song sung by cover band, or not original singer? ✏️‭ by Lionpitcher‭ on english.SE
09:09
@M.A.R. They are 100% sure that the USA started it
Daily Octordle #292
7️⃣6️⃣
9️⃣8️⃣
🕐🔟
🕛4️⃣
Score: 69
octordle.com
09:46
Unnecessary invented word of the day: polycule
Noun: polycule (plural polycules)
  1. All of the people linked through their relationships, usually romantic and/or sexual, to one or more members of a polyamorous group.
10:07
It turns out that Robert Oppenheimer loved the poems of George Herbert
George Herbert (3 April 1593 – 1 March 1633) was an English poet, orator, and priest of the Church of England. His poetry is associated with the writings of the metaphysical poets, and he is recognised as "one of the foremost British devotional lyricists." He was born in Wales into an artistic and wealthy family and largely raised in England. He received a good education that led to his admission to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1609. He went there with the intention of becoming a priest, but he became the University's Public Orator and attracted the attention of King James I. He sat in th...
Especially "The Pulley"
10:49
I hope the Russians don’t nuke Kherson after all the getting-out.
Type “Double Asteroid Redirection Test” on your mobile browser google search and see if something happens.
@ConGovDeIn Nice ))
11:06
:)
 
2 hours later…
13:22
@CowperKettle that sounds a bit lost in translation
> Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly (LLY) dipped 4.37 per cent Friday to US $352.30 — erasing over US $15 billion in market cap — after a Twitter Blue verified account impersonating the brand promised free insulin.
@M.A.R. Because it's complicated. The USA invested billions in Ukraine to create the Ukrainian Coup of 2014 and install a Neonazi government, and Russia was obliged to protect Russian-speakers.
Frankly, a tiny crowd.
This is the Zeitgeist movement, which even Putin's supporters consider a bit mad.
So it has a tiny following
The Profanity Embroidery Group, Whitstable, UK
14:16
When I was an orchestral musician, the orchestra wore black tie but a soloist always wore white tie. No ties for women, of course.
14:30
#Worldle #295 3/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜➡️
🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜↖️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
⭐⭐
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
Stupid flags.
I just realized that yesterday, I confused frac (white tie) and froc (clerical garment).
@tchrist Kelly won. Yay! Arizona keeps getting bluer, and so do the Republicans.
🌎 Nov 12, 2022 🌍
🔥 73 | Avg. Guesses: 5.67
⬜🟨⬜🟥🟥🟥🟩 = 7

#globle
I must confess that I have never worn any of them.
🌎 Nov 12, 2022 🌍
🔥 8 | Avg. Guesses: 6.86
⬜🟨🟧🟧🟧🟥🟥🟥
🟥🟥🟥🟩 = 12

#globle
Wordle 511 5/6

⬜⬜🟨⬜🟩
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
🟨⬜⬜⬜🟨
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Wordle 511 4/6

🟨⬜⬜🟩⬜
⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
@jlliagre Your penultimate guess must have started with the same letter that it ended with.
@Robusto Nice!
14:46
@Robusto ? No word definition found
@jlliagre My bad. Brain cramp. I was thinking of my penultimate guess.
I was up late.
Daily Quordle 292
5️⃣3️⃣
7️⃣4️⃣
quordle.com
Daily Quordle 292
4️⃣5️⃣
7️⃣6️⃣
quordle.com
@jlliagre You beat me by one point. :-p
Yeah!!
Daily Octordle #291
6️⃣3️⃣
9️⃣🕚
🔟7️⃣
🕐🕛
Score: 71
octordle.com
@Xanne Medvedev today again mentioned nukes in his Telegram post.
14:58
@Robusto Hey, I actually beat you by three points!
@jlliagre My brain is fogged. I can't even do arithmetic this morning.
12 mins ago, by Robusto
I was up late.
My brain is fogged 100% of the time.
Not only was I up late, but I had too much wine. Dinner party.
Daily Octordle #292
8️⃣7️⃣
🕐🕚
4️⃣5️⃣
🔟9️⃣
Score: 67
octordle.com
@jlliagre OK, I beat you by 4 in Octordle. So now I'm ahead by a point. ;-)
I think I did the arithmetic right that time.
@CowperKettle " ... not only out of inherent human kindness" ??? Who are they trying to kid?
@CowperKettle Whose "reminder" is that? Oh, Medvedev's. Never mind.
@CowperKettle Is the quarrel between Nazism and Russia only about the difference in ideology of fascism and communism?
I really do not understand the cause of that intense bitterness between Nazis and Russia.
15:11
La palabra del día #310 4/6

⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
🟨⬜⬜🟨⬜
⬜⬜🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

https://lapalabradeldia.com/
@ConGovDeIn Putin did not like the expansion of the NATO in the early 2000s, and the Orange Revolution of 2004 in Ukraine. Nationalism in Ukraine (which exists) was a pretext to draw some citizens living in Easter Ukraine to the Russian side.
But it did not pan out, because in Eastern Ukraine, as everywhere, the population in 2014 was mixed. Some did not want Russia to come.
I hoped in February 2014 that Putin would limit himself to Crimea and would not barge into other regions.
In Crimea, the population was more monolithic and pro-Russian.
And in 2022, even the former Mayor of Kharkiv, who had been pro-Russian even after 2014, started filming himself on the frontlines with the Ukrainian flag and in full battle gear.
@CowperKettle hmm... I feel something very strange here: there are communists who do not like Nationalism, (some accuse even Lenin of it when he and his men decided to concede that territory to Germany in WWI) but Putin is such a Nationalist as no one. How come Russia then be a Communist country?
@ConGovDeIn Putin is not a nationalist, he is pining for the fjords. I mean, for the Russian Empire.
15:18
sorry, I didn't get that.
He wants a bigger Russia.
He is not against the Ukrainian language etc., he only wants a bigger Russia.
how is not that a love for one's country? The Parliamentary Govt. in !917 gave up a land to Germany, didn't they?
15:19
@CowperKettle Expansion is nationalism.
The parliamentary government lost to the Bolsheviks exactly because they refused to stop fighting against Germany.
The Bolsheviks gave the whole of Ukraine to Germany.
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (also known as the Treaty of Brest in Russia) was a separate peace treaty signed on 3 March 1918 between Russia and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire), that ended Russia's participation in World War I. The treaty was signed at German-controlled Brest-Litovsk (Polish: Brześć Litewski; since 1945, Brest, now in modern Belarus), after two months of negotiations. The treaty was agreed upon by the Russians to stop further invasion. As a result of the treaty, Soviet Russia defaulted on all of Imperial Russia's commitments to the...
@ConGovDeIn No, when you are building a multinational empire, it's just imperialism, not nationalism
@CowperKettle And then Stalin, the pupil of Lenin, expanded again?
@ConGovDeIn No. Then Leon Trotsky created a New Model Army from scratch, in 1918-1919, and brought all territories back, except Finland, Poland and the Baltic.
@CowperKettle why did they decide to give it when they had planned to capture it again? Germany was in itself losing
@CowperKettle That's something new. Did all the labourers (so called) fight for their country?
@ConGovDeIn Because, in order to undercut the Parliamentary Provisional Government, the Bolsheviks passed decrees allowing soldiers to self-organize and to just go home, if they want.
@ConGovDeIn The Trotsky Army had old Tsarist officers as its backbone.
15:24
Same people, but different minds!
Old regime officers fought to recreate the empire, they decided that the Bolsheviks will gradually improve or be overthrown.
They were called "military specialists" to avoid mentioning that they were basically Whites.
I'm really get confused.
Because it was a confusing Civil War.
Did Bolsheviks wanted Russia's lost territory back or nott?
They wanted it back.
And they got 90% of it back.
And started funding revolutions abroad.
The Spartacist uprising (German: Spartakusaufstand), also known as the January uprising (Januaraufstand), was a general strike and the accompanying armed struggles that took place in Berlin from 5 to 12 January 1919. It occurred in connection with the November Revolution that broke out following Germany's defeat in World War I. The uprising was primarily a power struggle between the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) led by Friedrich Ebert, which favored a social democracy, and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, which wanted to set up a council...
15:26
through same soldiers to which they had called to come back?
The Socialist Federative Republic of Councils in Hungary (Hungarian: Magyarországi Szocialista Szövetséges Tanácsköztársaság) (due to an early mistranslation, it became widely known as the Hungarian Soviet Republic in English-language sources (Hungarian: Magyar Szovjet-köztársaság)), literally the Republic of Councils in Hungary (Hungarian: Magyarországi Tanácsköztársaság) was a short-lived Communist state that existed from 21 March 1919 to 1 August 1919 (133 days), succeeding the First Hungarian Republic. The Hungarian Soviet Republic was a small communist rump state. When the Republic of Councils...
@ConGovDeIn Yes, after taking all power, the Bolsheviks re-instituted harsh discipline.
It was just a ploy before taking power, they used democratic mechanisms to soften their opponents.
But in Germany, the Communists didn't only want economical communism but total destruction of past culture of Germnay.
And after taking power, they shut down democracy.
@ConGovDeIn I don't know about that
@CowperKettle So tough all this is!
@CowperKettle My source is an autobiography whose name you know i cannot take.
The Bolsheviks destroyed soviets by the end of 1918.
They used worker's councils ("Soviets") to get themselves "elected" by intimidation and vote-rigging, and then made them just a hollow shell.
15:30
I'm feeling like I know nothing and cannot understand nothing.
Because it was easier to get elected into "Soviets". Workers and peasants were naive, poor, and did not have the time for machinations.
Sorry, sir, I'm leaving.
So the Bolsheviks "elected" themselves there, and voila.
@ConGovDeIn Okay!
 
1 hour later…
16:31
@CowperKettle But still called it "The Soviet Union".
A better name would have been "The Not Soviet Union", perhaps.
The so-so Soviet Union.
16:48
@ConGovDeIn We don't really have good or bas universities: they're all fine.
@Cerberus Oh, sorry sir, I became a little care less about specificity. What I meant was: Is University of Utrecht considered to have produced the best researchers (and that too large in number) in comparison to many other universities?
I have no idea.
I don't think you can differentiate between our universities that way.
And I really admire such a country.
@ConGovDeIn if you're looking to study in a "prestigious" university, you should know that most of this prestige is subjective and doesn't go beyond your Yale or Harward or Cambridge.
@M.A.R. My Yale or Harvard or Cambridge?
17:02
And that the fact that, say, Nobel laurates studied or teach at some university doesn't improve your chances of becoming a Nobel laurate yourself
It is not about prestige, but more about job security.
Well, I'm probably not familiar with your field, butalmost everywhere, your degree matters much more than where it comes from
Can I have straight answer here: which degree offers most secured career business admin., computer engineering, or anything else?
Pure science degree is a pure waste, until you live in US or UK.
Hmph, I only vaguely know Mitch is some sort of engineer.
He might even be fixing up paper airplanes for all I know
@M.A.R. You owe us a verb.
17:05
I owe myself sleep
Verbs come first.
That's elitist
Hey, I don't make the rules.
@ConGovDeIn have you tried your luck at Workplace chat or, I dunno, Code Review or Academia or something?
@M.A.R. Which chat room? Workplace chat room?
17:07
@ConGovDeIn yep
Thanks for the directions, pal.
No problem
@M.A.R. Thank you for attending to your duty.
Your friendly neighborhood pharmacist wants to convey your daily disturbing fact: Herbal preparations, especially those crackpot overpriced weight loss herbs may contain pyrrolizidine alkaloids that are severely hepatotoxic and may even necessitate liver transplantation
Yeesh.
17:11
Isn't nature wonderful
You mean human nature?
No I mean green foresty things that smell like damp soil and make your brain go all woooo!
Nature is impartial: an equal-opportunity killer.
Traditional medicine is practically one of the top five lies of this century
Like every good lie, it has hints of truth
Replacing "the check is in the mail," perhaps.
17:15
There's some plant out there that can lead us to the perfect painkiller or anti-rheumatoid drug.
But humanity is hanging its huge ass way out over the edge, where Nature stands ready to give it the boot.
But snake oil salesmen have seized control of the ship, and that plant might go extinct before scientists find it, because they're loath to go natural much
@M.A.R. They will learn how to synthesize a patentable version of the chemical first.
Sure, that's why I said "lead". You find the lead candidate, then remove and add a few functional groups to reduce side effects, improve oral absorption, and increase potency
It takes a couple of years at most once you do find the plant. The clinical trials take more than a decade though
That varies around the world, though, doesn't it?
17:22
And then you find that it makes people's hearts explode so it's withdrawn from the market
Also, as we've recently seen, exigent circumstances fast-track a lot of drugs.
@Robusto I think there are only a few pharmaceutical companies that even have the resources to start and manage crlinical trials for novel drugs, so it's not so much around the world as company policy.
My biologist son just accepted a position at BMS.
I always ask him this kind of question.
@Robusto you can do that with biological drugs because they're larger molecules and thus often more specific. With smaller drugs, who knows where there drug ends up, there might be thousands of receptors in the body it could bind to, but it binds one, the one we've designed it to bind, adequately
Acetaminophen is one aromatic group and two ubiquitous polar groups. There is definitely thousands of places in the body it can exert an effect on
@Robusto congrats!
@M.A.R. Yeah, and I've heard its approval was kind of hinky.
Like, it would never get approved today.
17:26
Nah, why not? That's probably an overexaggeration
It's a pretty safe drug. Could be more effective, but it's one of the few drugs I don't really mind people taking whenever they want to
Ibuprofen is not as noble, for example
@M.A.R. Well, as I understand it, the LD50 is way too low to be acceptable now.
It suffers from the same problems as other insanely common drugs. Sure, taking 20 pills at once can be very dangerous, or even fatal
But really it's just that problems concerning commonly prescribed drugs are always magnified.
For example, newer anxiolytic drugs, such as eszopiclone, are very popular now
They will inevitably be shunned and demonized in a decade or two, but theyrestill far superior to the likes of Xanax
@M.A.R. I understand just about all the benzodiazepines are on their way out, at least as an easy fix for long-term problems.
There are quite a few indications where they're irreplaceable, and not just due to their availability and cost, but yeah, ideally doctors shouldn't prescribe them for run-of-the-mill insomnia
The other side of the coin is doctors are often hesitant to treat patients with older drugs even when newer drugs are ineffective
Treatment-resistant psychotic disorders, depressive disorders, pain
Some drugs are around only because a small subset of patients have been taking them for decades and can't switch
Don't opioids lose their effectiveness over time?
17:40
Yep. 60 mg of morphine can kill me, because I'm morphine-naive. A morphine addict could take 2000 mg and not feel a thing
Yes, the milk of the poppy was far more potent during the reign of Julius Caesar and Aegon the Conqueror than it is now.
Chronic pain is very difficult to treat. We usually throw everything we have at it
It may be difficult to treat, and maybe that's why US doctors like to dance around that topic.
@M.A.R. Hence the common pattern of addicts newly released from prison offing themselves as soon as they get out. They think their old dosages still apply to them, so they die.
Patient: "My back is always in pain."
Doctor: "How very sad."
17:42
Nothing more altruistic than relieving pain
And current drugs of choice for, say, neuropathic pain have a very high NNT, meaning, one of every 30 or 40 individuals treated with the drug gets the measurable pain relief we want them to
 
1 hour later…
18:48
> 10. Solar storm or gamma-ray burst.

9. Supervolcano eruption.

8. Asteroid impact.

7. Naturally emergent, or maliciously engineered, pandemic plant pathogen affecting staple crops.

6. Naturally emergent, or maliciously engineered, pandemic human pathogen.

5. Orwellian dystopia. Totalitarianism. Endless war paraded as peace. The human spirit crushed. Not a world you’d want to live in.

4. Cascading technological failures due to cyberattack, reckless development of artificial intelligence and/or some other example of complex systems failing in complex ways.
19:04
@Robusto Who never thinks about those from time to time?
That's why "formal" grammar is a fiction. It's neither formal nor a grammar; it's just a catechism of shibboleths proffered by teachers to those who want acceptance. Most of us outgrow it, just like we outgrow playground bullying. But not everyone; "formal" grammar is just the most socially acceptable form of racism. It has no other purpose. — John Lawler 1 hour ago
He is just so angry and unreasonable and one sided.
I cannot take him seriously.
Because he also weaves this anger into his linguistics.
> We shall formally define a grammatical Sentence as a grammatical Subject plus a grammatical Predicate bearing a finite verb inflected for person, number, and tense which is governed by the just-mentioned grammatical Subject.
I wonder whether that is too formal not to be fiction.
Or useful.
Nor useful?
Sentence := Subject + Predicate is a pretty basic formal definition.
Grammatically speaking.
The problem with these questions is twofold. For one, the asker is using toy dictionaries for learners. And for the other, the asker and those dictionaries lack a sufficiently rich grammatical model to account for actual usage patterns.
2. As a modifier: exactly, precisely; actually; very closely. Also (now archaic) even just (cf. even adv. 5).
 a. Of place or position, modifying prepositional phrases and adverbs.
 b. Of degree and comparison, modifying as or so with adjectives, adverbs, or quantifiers: equally or quite as ——.
 c. Of manner, modifying prepositional phrases, adverbs, and conjunctions, esp. as, like. Also of reason or purpose, modifying prepositional phrases and conjunctions.
 d. Of amount, number, or quantity, modifying nouns, pronouns, and quantifiers.
So the same major sense covers a word that modifies all of:

prepositional phrases and adverbs.
as or so with adjectives, adverbs, or quantifiers.
prepositional phrases, adverbs, and conjunctions, esp. as, like.
prepositional phrases and conjunctions.
nouns, pronouns, and quantifiers.
prepositional phrases, adverbs, and temporal clauses.
prepositional phrases, nouns, pronouns, and adjectives.
noun phrases with the.
interrogative pronouns and adverbs introducing a subject or object clause.
What then is the "part of speech" into which Donatus or Priscian would have classified such a word, and why do we care?
> DE ADVERBIO

aduerbium quid est? pars orationis, quae adiecta uerbo significationem eius explanat atque implet.

aduerbio quot accidunt? tria.

quae? significatio comparatio figura.

significatio aduerbiorum in quo est? quia sunt aut loci aduerbia aut temporis aut numeri aut negandi aut affirmandi aut demonstrandi aut optandi aut hortandi aut ordinis aut interrogandi aut similitudinis aut qualitatis aut quantitatis aut dubitandi aut personalia aut uocandi aut respondendi aut separandi aut iurandi aut eligendi aut congregandi aut prohibendi aut euentus aut comparandi.
You are only allowed three accidents if you're driving an adverb.
After that, they take away your licence.
That ut indocte imprudenter bit might be an issue.
19:44
So we need to know which part of speech to assign a word that allows for the modification of: quantifiers; adjectives; adverbs; adverbs introducing a subject or object clause; as or so with adjectives, adverbs, or quantifiers; nouns; noun phrases with the; prepositional phrases; pronouns; interrogative pronouns; conjunctions; and temporal clauses.
20:22
The Italians, Spanish, and Portuguese all call Aelius Donatus the obvious Elio/Élio Donato (and the French, Donat); same happens with their translation of Hadrian as Publio Elio Traiano Adriano. But I had thought that all the given names like Ilya, Elia, Elio, Elios, Elián, Ellis, Elliot came only from the Old Testament name Elijah, not from the Roman gens Aelia nor the Greek word that gave us Helen in modern English.
The gens Aelia, occasionally written Ailia, was a plebeian family in Rome, which flourished from the fifth century BC until at least the third century AD, a period of nearly eight hundred years. The archaic spelling Ailia is found on coins, but must not be confused with Allia, which is a distinct gens. The first member of the family to obtain the consulship was Publius Aelius Paetus in 337 BC. Under the empire the Aelian name became still more celebrated. It was the name of the emperor Hadrian, and consequently of the Antonines, whom he adopted. A number of landmarks built by Hadrian also bear...
 
2 hours later…
22:05
Colombia has a very interesting flag.
Reminds me of a Rothko painting.
22:44
Reminds me the tricolorul
Drapelul național al României este tricolor, cu benzile verticale, începând de la lance, albastru, galben și roșu. Are o proporție de 2:3 între lățime și lungime. Constituția României prevede la articolul 12, alineatul 1 că „Drapelul României este tricolor; culorile sunt așezate vertical, în ordinea următoare începând de la lance: albastru, galben, roșu”. Proporțiile, nuanțele culorilor precum și protocolul drapelului au fost stabilite prin Legea nr. 75 din 16 iulie 1994. Drapelul este foarte asemănător cu drapelul civil al Andorrei și cel de stat al Ciadului, neavând însă nicio legătură cu acestea...
@jlliagre Well, the colors are the same, but I'm talking about the compositon. Not many countries do aught with three colors but give them equal space.
Right. Thanks for using aught! I had to look it up in a dictionary :-)
De rien.
23:39
> Simbolismo de la bandera colombiana
> El amarillo representa el oro del país y otras riquezas naturales. Estas riquezas tienen un gran peso en la representación simbólica, ya que ocupan la mitad del pabellón.
> El azul simboliza las aguas del mar que bañan a la nación colombiana. Colombia tiene una línea de costa tanto en el Océano Pacífico como en el Atlántico, lo que le da una importancia estratégica en la región.
> Finalmente, el rojo simboliza la sangre de los colombianos que lucharon para salvar a su país del dominio español y hacerlo independiente.

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