English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

tchrist

00:25

@jlliagre Winter having somehow a "culturally dependent" definition has never been something I've been able to reconcile in my own mind. Whether those who have done so are too dim to worry about mathematics and astronomy or whether they're too bright to do so, I don't know. But upon us programmers does it fall to encode rigorous computer instructions, and these fuzzy social whims are ever and anon a font everlasting of vexing bugs and egregious stupidities that diminish our quality of life.

> In some cultures, the season is regarded as beginning at the solstice and ending on the following equinox[16][17] – in the Northern Hemisphere, depending on the year, this corresponds to the period between 20, 21 or 22 December and 19, 20 or 21 March.[12]

In Scandinavia, winter in one tradition begins on 14 October and ends on the last day of February.

> The sky over the city of Vancouver was the color of a television tuned to a Prince concert. OK, maybe not the whole sky. But enough of it that people noticed. A bunch of streetlights — a few hundred out of thousands — had suddenly changed. What had been moonshine white was now blue, or purple, or even violet.

The older I get, the less I seem to understand simple English.

Mitch

When I'm ruler of the Earth, I will decree that there will be no winter. It may very well get cold and snowy for a good part of the year, but by law we will ignore it by not naming it

tchrist

> While the indigo lights have also spawned theories online ...

Indigo, no less.

The sequencing of color-names in blue, purple, or even violet suggests a perceived progression of which I am unfamiliar.

Also, where do we slip indigo into such lists? Asking for a friend (Roy G. Newton).

@Mitch Are you trying to save all the daylight?

Or all the nightlight?

And are they mood indigo or ne plus violette?

Q: Why do you have ultra violet nightlights?
A: So I don't step on the scorpions.

Barefoot.

tchrist

00:52

mdpi.com/2072-4292/14/19/4976/htm

My hypothesis is that these suddenly "purple" street lights were never actually "blue" leds inside them to begin with. You can make white light using a mathematically infinite number of different combinations of spectral frequencies. But you don't need to use all of them. You just need to pair two that "cancel" each other out.

I bet the laminate that peels away had phosphors that were generating something a bit further up from yellow towards orange so that they could still use the blue–yellow opponency channel to cancel out a "blue" led that was itself further down from blue towards violet.

But it could also be incomplete separation causing a variety of metameric matches, which is why not all "purple" street lights are the same "purple".

But there's no way I believe they had a red laminate.

Because they you'd be relying on the red–green opponency channel instead, and these are all "blue" LEDs not "green" ones.

You could maybe make nice yellow lights that way, though.

One thing I read had them using "blue" leds that generated narrow-band spectra as low as 405 nm for their innards. Come on people, that's not blue. That's violet. Blue is like 470.

But here again I believe we've fallen prey to the "fuzzy social whims" thing.

> While it is technically possible to make a wavelength anywhere between 395 and 530 nm, most large suppliers concentrate on creating blue LEDs (450 to 475 nm) for producing white light with phosphors, and green LEDs in the 520- to 530-nm range for traffic signal green lighting.

And nobody is going to see 475 as anything like purple, let alone violet.

So you aren't going to be seeing something approximating the "black light" glow simply because they've exposed a bare-bulb LED at 470.

It's impossible to get accurate information about this in the popular press, because they don't know what they're talking about and so say silly fuzzy social things.

Given that red + yellow = green while red - yellow = orange, then how in the world can red + blue == red - blue!?

Something is wrong here.

No, red + green = yellow. Gosh.

I still don't believe that adding and subtracting the same pair can ever give the same answer.

In unrelated matters, the US Senate seems to have decided that you don't have to be a same-race couple to legally marry. How progressive is that?

Now at last marathoners can openly marry indy five hundred drivers.

Strike that, only one of them at a time, not all five hundred.

CowperKettle

01:58

Cerberus

Not great.

CowperKettle

> une police éternelle

I never knew that "police" can mean "fountain" in French.

CowperKettle

02:16

If same-sex marriage is allowed, why not allow multi-partner marriage?

jlliagre

@CowperKettle Google translate picked the typeface meaning of "font", in French une police de caractères.

CowperKettle

@jlliagre Ah!

List of Joseph Smith's wives

Joseph Smith (1805–1844), founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, taught and practiced polygamy during his ministry, and married multiple women during his lifetime. Smith and some of the leading quorums of the church he founded publicly denied he taught or practiced it.In 1852, leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) acknowledged that Smith had practiced plural marriage and produced a written revelation of Smith's that authorizes its practice. Smith's lawful widow Emma Smith, his son Joseph Smith III, and most members of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of...

Oh those scrupulous Wikipedians

forest

dum dum dum dum

CowperKettle

02:34

@Mitch There will be "Special Snowy Operation" instead of winter. Way to go, comrade!

CowperKettle

03:11

Girkin in a dugout

tchrist

03:52

Beethoven - Symphony No. 5

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CowperKettle

04:20

> When I think about my dugout
Where I dare not poke me mug out,
Oh, I'm glad I've got this bit of a blighty one.

Blighty one

Noun: Blighty one (plural Blighty ones)

(military slang) A wound that is relatively minor, but sufficiently severe that one will be sent to the hospital in England.

CowperKettle

04:34

Physicists have purportedly created the first-ever wormhole, a kind of tunnel theorized in 1935 by Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen that leads from one place to another by passing into an extra dimension of space.

CowperKettle

06:40

> Little known fact: Before the crowbar was invented, crows simply drank at home.

Feeling tired again.

The last 3 days of relative calm on the East Ukraine frontline.

After that, the earth will freeze solid.

Since the West has not given Ukraine neither tanks nor planes nor 100+ km rockets, this will drag on for a long, long time yet.

Vikas

@jlliagre For the same tilt reason, as a kid I would think that since sun would be closer to Earth from 22nd December (and bigger days), winter will start going away. But in reality, that is the beginning of even colder days and fog here.

CowperKettle

I had a daily calendar on my table as a kid, with the times of sunrise and sunset marked.

And starting from December 23, finally days started growing longer

On 22 December, sun rose at 09:38 and set at 14:15 voshod-solnca.ru/sun/…

But staring in April, it was light through the night.

And in June, you could go outside past midnight, and it was almost like day.

There was often red glow of the sun visible beyond the horizon at 01:00 am.

I remember playing Heroes of Might and Magic II through a June "night", and it was bright all through the night ))

Гой, питалася княжа корона — Маленький хор. "Fabbrica", І-Франківськ

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Ukrainian Christmas carol

💝💝💝

I still haven't managed to translate the final stanza.

CowperKettle

07:13

Whan is the meaning of third rope babies?

San Francisco's ruling Board of Supervisors has voted to let the city's police use robots that can kill

> OpenAI released their ChatGPT. Damn, it is good.

A chat AI engine that can remember the previous bits of conversation.

And it composes poetry on the fly

Vikas

07:50

I think I have a little incorrect understanding of 21 June and 22 December. Isn't sunset supposed to be quickest on 22 December? According to this site, quickest (around 17:30) already passed on 30 November. But here it is increasing closer it moves to 22 December.

Similarly, most delayed sunrise is around 18 January.

I think 22 December simply is more about smallest day. It isn't about sunrise and sunset time.

CowperKettle

08:28

I also noticed that sunsent and sunrise do not approach each other symmetrically as we get closer to December 22. There must be an explanation on Astronomy SE

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in title (98): Build muscle or grow muscle?‭ by IronExcavater‭ on english.SE

CowperKettle

Thank you, @SmokeDetector

Although I don't understand which word there is bad.

CowperKettle

09:11

> Nowhere nor in anything, except in the assertion of the Church, can we find that God or Christ founded anything like what churchmen understand by the Church. (Leo Tolstoy)

> "Gandhi listed Tolstoy's book "The Kingdom of God is Within You", as well as John Ruskin's "Unto This Last" and the poet Shrimad Rajchandra (Raychandbhai), as the three most important modern influences in his life."

M.A.R.

09:30

@CowperKettle all that trigonometry and crap . . . It's rarely symmetrical

CowperKettle

Yes.

Word of the day: illth (opposite to wealth) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illth

> An illthy merchant.

Vikas

11:08

> Christmas is known as "Badaa Din" (Big Day) in North and North-West India and people plant trees on this day.

But Christmas word is used maiy.

CowperKettle

11:19

@Vikas Great tradition

Vikas

12:14

@CowperKettle But I will observe this year if people actually plant trees. Tree plantation events are common here but I will see if they also do it on Christmas.

> Van Mahotsav or Vanamahotsava, lit. 'Forest festival', is an annual one-week tree-planting festival in India which is celebrated in the first week of July.

jlliagre

12:30

@Vikas Traditional seasons are bounded by an equinox and a solstice. The equinox is the time when the rotational axis of the Earth is perpendicular to the Earth-Sun direction, i.e. the Sun is exactly on top of the equator. The solstices are on the other hand the time when the Earth axis is the most tilted so the Sun is on top of one of the Tropics.

viande-à-chien

Hey. To get silly, is that a minced way of saying to get drunk, or just slang or do you think it means something else in this context: Well, anyway, as much as I would like to stay here and get silly with you, Mom, I can't. I gotta go. (from the movie Deep Impact)?

Could that just mean saying foolish things, for instance.

Vikas

12:47

@jlliagre Yeah. I just had wrong impression that sun would set as late as it can throughout the year on 21 June, and quickest on 22 December.

Vikas

12:59

But hey, it might be true for certain areas. I won't go into that maths and physics.

jlliagre

@Vikas That would be the case if the Earth orbit was exactly a circle with the Sun at its center, but it is an ellipsis with the Sun roughly at one of its focal point. That makes the Sun position and sunrise/sunset times less intuitive.

Analemma

In astronomy, an analemma (; from Ancient Greek ἀνάλημμα (analēmma) 'support') is a diagram showing the position of the Sun in the sky as seen from a fixed location on Earth at the same mean solar time, as that position varies over the course of a year. The diagram will resemble a figure eight. Globes of Earth often display an analemma as a two-dimensional figure of equation of time vs. declination of the Sun. The north–south component of the analemma results from the change in the Sun's declination due to the tilt of Earth's axis of rotation. The east–west component results from the nonuniform...

CowperKettle

13:28

Mitch

14:11

@CowperKettle Nice... it's so popular I can't get in to try things.

Robusto

14:35

@jlliagre I've always liked the way the analemma is like a sine wave looped back on itself.

#Worldle #314 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
⭐⭐⭐
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

That was easy.

🌎 Dec 1, 2022 🌍
🔥 92 | Avg. Guesses: 5.46
⬜🟥🟥🟩 = 4

#globle

Wordle 530 4/6

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Daily Quordle 311
🟥9️⃣
8️⃣5️⃣
quordle.com

Yeesh.

Daily Octordle #311
🕛🕚
8️⃣5️⃣
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4️⃣6️⃣
Score: 63

Coulda been better.

Vikas

15:09

#Worldle #314 2/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟨⬜⬜➡️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

I made a wild guess.

It worked XD

I have heard about its capital but couldn't remember the name.

Satellite images suggest Russia is preparing for massive airstrikes | DW News

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jlliagre

#Worldle #314 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
⭐⭐⭐
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

jlliagre

15:45

🌎 Dec 1, 2022 🌍
🔥 4 | Avg. Guesses: 6.64
🟧🟥🟧🟥🟥🟩 = 6

#globle

Wordle 530 3/6

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Daily Quordle 311
5️⃣8️⃣
6️⃣7️⃣
quordle.com

Daily Octordle #311
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5️⃣6️⃣
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4️⃣8️⃣
Score: 69

Mitch

@CowperKettle Oh snap. Contrary to what I said before, I -do- know of that guy and he has some minor AI fame (or rather infamy).

Yannic Kilcher (the guy doing that podcast) is a recent PhD. His notoriety outside of the podcast is from last spring/summer (May/June 2022?) where he finetune trained GPT3 on 4chan text (4chan is well known for being... awful) creating a chatbot that is intentionally toxic. His notoriety comes not from building that but from making it publicly available.

Source and signatories of the letter

I was cleaning up some old tabs in my browser and that was one of them and the name caught my eye and I wondered where I had seen it before and it was here.

So the guy knows what he is talking about, but has questionable judgement.

The idea of a toxic chatbot could be useful if used to -detect- such text (eg in order to warn people) but it could also be used by bad actors to produce text automatically to rile people up.

NVZ

16:45

Hello from the other saaaaaaide. :)

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected (78): "If I were to go" vs "If I had gone"‭ by madara‭ on english.SE

CowperKettle

@Mitch Oh! That explains his self-imposed cool hacker look with dark glasses ))

Vikas

Ellenabad

Ellenabad, previously known as Kharial, is a developing city with a municipal committee, near Sirsa City in the Sirsa district of the state of Haryana, India. It is located to the south of the Ghaggar-Hakra River and serves as a port of entry into the state of Haryana from the Rajasthan side. The Ellenabad city is divided into 17 wards for which elections are held every 5 years. As of 2011, the city had a population of 36623 in city limits and had a metro population of 44452. Ellenabad Municipal Committee has total administration over 6,810 houses to which it supplies basic amenities like water...

Mandi Dabwali

Mandi Dabwali is a municipal committee town, near Sirsa City in Sirsa district in the Indian state of Haryana. It is located on the border of Haryana and Punjab. It is at a distance of 60 km from district headquarter Sirsa and 40 km from Bathinda, Punjab. Pin code of Mandi Dabwali is 125104 and STD code is 01668.In the 2001 Census of India, Mandi Dabwali had a population of 53811. Males constituted 53% of the population and females 47%.In the 2011 Census of India, Mandi Dabwali had a population of 269,929. Males constituted 141945 of the population and females 127984. Punjabi is the domina...

@CowperKettle I need a little help.

So this Mandi Dabwali is also a city/town just like Ellenabad in same district.

But it has more population, bigger markets and facilities.

And still, Wikipedia uses word "town" for it "city" for Ellenabad. I don't understand why.

I looked definitions of city and town.

According to that Ellenabad should be a town too.

CowperKettle

I don't know what is considered city and what is town ))

Vikas

Could it be because the reference Wikipedia used has incorrect information?

@CowperKettle Yeah it's confusing.

CowperKettle

16:57

In Russian, Moscow is a gorod and Pervouralsk is a gorod, although it's 100 times smaller.

Vikas

Google says city is bigger than town. Town is between village and city.

CowperKettle

For very small gorods, the phrase urban-type settlement is sometimes used in Russia. For instance, if there are 5000 people. But it's decided by local authorities.

Sunil Grover

Sunil Grover (born 3 August 1977) is an Indian actor and comedian from Mumbai. He came into limelight for his portrayal as Gutthi on television show Comedy Nights with Kapil but gained popularity for playing the role of Dr Mashoor Gulati and Rinku Devi on The Kapil Sharma Show. He was also seen in Bollywood films Gabbar Is Back, The Legend of Bhagat Singh and Bharat. == Personal life == Grover was born on 3 August 1977 in Mandi Dabwali town of Sirsa district, Haryana. He received Master's Degree in Theatre from Panjab University Chandigarh. He is married to Aarti and has a son Mohan.In February...

Some famous actor from Mandi Dabwali

> he portrayed Sonu Singh in the thriller web-series Sunflower, for which he shed almost 8.1 kilos

Vikas

Yeah. Mainly a comedian.

CowperKettle

Suffered a heart attack this year, had four bypasses

Vikas

Didn't know this.

But many actors died after 2020.

So we have these four main cities/towns in Sirsa district. Sirsa itself is a main biggest city.

2nd biggest is this Dabwali. So it's strange they call it town and all others cities.

What if I edit it ?

And make it a city too?

CowperKettle

17:09

Why not?

Vikas

But will they ask reference?

CowperKettle

Parizh, Chelyabinsk Oblast

Parizh (Russian: Пари́ж, for "Paris") is a village (selo) in Nagaybaksky District of Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, located on the south border of the district. Population: 2,390 (1997 est.). It was established as a Nağaybäk Cossack settlement in 1842 and soon after was given its name to honor the Battle of Paris. Several other villages named for Russian victories in Napoleonic Wars are located nearby: Fershampenuaz (the administrative center of the district), Leyptsig, Berlin, and others. In 2005, an Eiffel Tower 1:5 replica was constructed in Parizh to serve as a cellular network station.

M.A.R.

@Vikas these articles both were written by Wikipedians who merely had an interest in composing them. They're not some authority on what a town or a city is.

CowperKettle

@Vikas Maybe in India there is no difference between "town" and "city". You need to look up the local legislation, I guess ))

Vikas

@CowperKettle Actually town word isn't used much here. People love to call the area city rather than town.

@M.A.R. Yeah.

I just changed settlement_type to city LOL

Let's see how long it lasts.

It seems fair to me now.

M.A.R.

17:15

@Vikas the websites for the municipalities of Ellenabad and Mandi Dabwali are probably as official as it gets on how these settlements are to be referred to and make your position defensible should any controversy arise

Vikas

Should I reverse?

CowperKettle

The sign says (village of) Timonovo, and somebody added and Pumbovo

Vikas

Basically this is the source they used: latlong.net/place/mandi-dabwali-haryana-india-13611.html

It doesn't look official.

CowperKettle

Timon and Pumbaa

Timon and Pumbaa are an animated meerkat and warthog duo introduced in Disney's 1994 animated film The Lion King and its franchise. Timon was played through his many appearances by Nathan Lane (in all three films and early episodes of the show), Max Casella (the original actor in Broadway musical), Kevin Schon (in certain episodes of the show), Quinton Flynn (in certain episodes of the show), Bruce Lanoil in the Wild About Safety shorts and Kingdom Hearts II, while Pumbaa is voiced by Ernie Sabella (in all of his traditionally animated speaking appearances), and was portrayed by Tom Alan Robbins...

CowperKettle

17:31

Tiny antennae sticking out of neurons in striatum are involved in time perception O_O link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12035-022-03095-9

How on earth. Do they sense time in the extracellular liquid?

Vikas

List of towns in India by population

The entire work of this article is based on the 2011 Census of India, conducted by the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, under Ministry of Home Affairs (India), Government of India. == Categorization == Census of India (2011) states the following criteria in defining towns. They are: Statutory Town (ST): All places with a municipality, corporation, cantonment board or notified town area committee etc. Census Town (CT): Those which have a population greater than 5000. Other definitions include percentage of non-agriculture working population and population density. ��2�...

Here both places are mentioned. According to this both are towns lol

Because they have population less than 100,000

> This article is about towns with a population under 100,000 (1 lakh). For cities (towns with Class-I status or population of 100,000 and above), see List of cities in India by population.

According to this, a city is also a town but more population.

I should leave this topic as it is.

Not worth spending time.

This Hollywood movie starts with an Indian song throughout credits.

Inside man - starting first mins

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When I started watching it, I suddenly paused it.

I thought I played some incorrect media file in VLC.

After 2-3 tries I Googled it and surprised to know about this.

It was a popular Hindi song.

Mitch

17:49

@NVZ You must've called a thousand times.

It took me a while to figure out what was going on in the youtube podcast -
it looked like ha has some really wild helmet and mouthpiece. But really he's sitting in a gamer chair (which has a wide head rest, going wide of his ears) and some kind of microphone setup placed right in front of his mouth. And because of the lighting I just could tell all that. Anyway, he's not a crackpot, he knows what he's talking about, but because of the GPT-4chan debacle, he might not be respected well by the community (even if his content is reasonable).

CowperKettle

I see ))

New perspective paper, in which I suggest that sleep replay is part of a process that train encoders/decoders between the cortex and the hippocampus, queried by low-level inputs.

We propose that insights happen during mental navigation and correspond to the rapid emergence of new concept fields in the hippocampus

This hippocampus is really busy.

M.A.R.

19:39

@CowperKettle haha I get it now

Xanne

Wordle 530 6/6

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M.A.R.

19:58

@CowperKettle this is exciting! I'm gonna save it for later

Vikas

20:21

Wordle 531 4/6

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Mitch

21:17

@Vikas good movie

@Vikas what's the song?

Robusto

22:03

@CowperKettle How do you say "Hakuna matata!" in Russian?

CowperKettle

@Robusto Akuna matata!

> I just got a new job making plastic Draculas. There are only two of us on the assembly line, so I have to make every second Count.

Акуна матата

Акуна Матата, также Хакуна Матата (суахили Hakuna Matata — в переводе с языка суахили буквально значит «никаких забот») — песня из мультфильма «Король Лев» (1994), которая была номинирована на «Оскар» в категории «Лучшая песня». Музыка — Элтона Джона, слова — Тима Райса. Она заняла 99-ю позицию (из 100) в рейтинге лучших песен в истории кинематографа, составленном «American Film Institute». == О песне == Музыка и мелодия песни были написаны Элтоном Джоном, а слова - Тимом Райсом. В мультфильме песню поют Тимон (сурикат, озвученный Натаном Лейном), Пумба (бородавочник, озвученный Эрни Сабеллой)...