English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2023-02-07

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12:23 AM

@CowperKettle Thank you.

12:52 AM

> The craft of building may have come from Elves or Men, but the Hobbits used it in their own fashion. They did not go in for towers. Their houses were usually long, low, and comfortable. The oldest kind were, indeed, no more than built imitations of smials, thatched with dry grass or straw, or roofed with turves, and having walls somewhat bulged.

That stage, however, belonged to the early days of the Shire, and hobbit-building had long since been altered, improved by devices, learned from Dwarves, or discovered by themselves. A preference for round windows, and even round doors, was the c…

> And now there's you. If you weren't hobbits, I doubt if we could house you. But we've got a room or two in the north wing that were made special for hobbits, when this place was built. On the ground floor as they usually prefer; round windows and all as they like it. I hope you'll be comfortable. You'll be wanting supper, I don't doubt. As soon as may be. This way now!

1:21 AM

Round windows and doors? Those guys weren't very good at building, were they.

@Mitch They wouldn't be crushed when the towers fell.

Thanks to the Aɴͣ⋌ᴑ⌐ᵢₐₙ
ʇןₙɐℲ

You have to blame SOMEBODY!

> Why was this earthquake particularly damaging?

The number one factor is building quality. It just trumps everything else. Building quality is controlled by a building code and the enforcement of that code. Turkey went through the terrible 1999 Izmit earthquake, which killed [more than 15,000] people, so Turkey had modern building codes within a few years of that earthquake. So then you say, “Well, given that, why do buildings fail? Are these buildings older than 20 years ago? Or were the buildings built in a manner that was not properly reinforced?”

There's just too much to be made through cheating. We've seen this in Florida, remember?

earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us6000jllz/pager

> Overall, the population in this region resides in structures that are extremely vulnerable to earthquake shaking, though some resistant structures exist. The predominant vulnerable building types are unreinforced brick masonry and low-rise nonductile concrete frame with infill construction.

2 hours later…

3:46 AM

> Our Universal Speech Translator (UST) is the first AI-powered translation system providing speech-to-speech translation for Hokkien, one of ~3k primarily spoken languages with no standard writing system & very few human translators. ai.facebook.com/blog/ai-translation-hokkien

@CowperKettle And so it begins.

4:37 AM

Yes. When UpdikeGPT 7.2 comes out, UST could be used to instantly translate its novels into Hokkien.

5:21 AM

> BioGPT-Large was just released by Microsoft. Trained from scratch on biomedical text, it's the current leader on the PubMedQA benchmark at 81% accuracy (human performance = 78%). twitter.com/katieelink/status/1622635429202898944

6:07 AM

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1 hour later…

7:19 AM

In Russian, it's simple. Mashina ends in na*, and is clearly feminine.

8:05 AM

Wordle 598 5/6

🟩🟨⬜⬜🟩
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

8:34 AM

> Prior to the 2003 discovery of Strain 121, which is able to reproduce at 121°С, a fifteen-minute exposure to autoclave temperatures was believed to kill all living organisms.

@Vikas Deus ex machina! That depends on how you decide to call it un lave-linge (masc.) but une machine à laver (fem.). In Belgium and Québec, more likely feminine, resp. une lessiveuse and une laveuse.

8:52 AM

@CowperKettle don't worry, it's Microsoft. The next update will make the whole thing crash and burn

@CowperKettle he just really hated that historical unity

:)

@jlliagre I think that is why they created the meme.

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Prompt: "Satan reading to sick kids in hospital"

Should I sign up for ChatGPT? I don't even know if it's uselful for me. Wikipedia says it's like a chat bot.

I don't know. I blacklisted it on Twitter.

And still I sometimes come across news about it.

But the news are all water-treading, with vacuous philosophizing.

It will hit us this year or the next, and bots will flood the Internet. People will have to come up with ingenuous registration procedures to make sure they are chatting with actual people.

This is why I blacklisted it. It will flood us anyway.

3 hours later…

11:47 AM

> In 2022, some 200 thousand foreigners visited Russia. This is 4.9 million less than in 2019. (Tourism Companies Association of Russia)

Данечка собирается в Африку / Daniela goes to Africa

12:13 PM

@CowperKettle Oh

> In a surprising discovery, researchers found that some bacteria encase their DNA in proteins called histones. Until recently, scientists didn’t think bacteria even had these proteins. nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00334-4

All bacteria are prokaryotes, so people thought that they had no histones.

> As part of their study, the researchers surveyed thousands of bacterial genomes. They found histone-like proteins in about 2% of the genomes, which suggests that there will be many other systems to study. “People got excited and said ‘oh, bacteria weren’t supposed to have histones’,” says Warnecke.

And now, voila, some 2% of species have them.

1:01 PM

🌎 Feb 7, 2023 🌍
🔥 2 | Avg. Guesses: 6.44
🟥🟥🟥🟥🟩 = 5

globle-game.com
#globle

#Worldle #382 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
⭐⭐⭐🪙
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

1:21 PM

Word of the day: dunkelflaute -- (German: [ˈdʊŋkəlˌflaʊtə], lit. 'dark doldrums' or 'dark wind lull')[1] is a period of time in which little or no energy can be generated with wind and solar power.

> Via Middle Low German flau, from Middle Dutch vlau (compare modern Dutch flauw). The Dutch word was borrowed from Old French flou (“tired, weary”), which is probably of Germanic origin and, if so, then cognate with German lau.

Adjective: flauw (comparative flauwer, superlative flauwst)

boring, tasteless, uninspired
Hij haalt soms de flauwste grappen uit! - He pulls the lamest pranks sometimes!
languid, weak
(concept) vague, hazy
Geen flauw idee! - Not the faintest idea!
(flavour) tasteless, bland

> Hij haalt soms de flauwste grappen uit! - He pulls the lamest pranks sometimes!

2:06 PM

Etymology of the day: aisle -- from Latin āla (wing)

2:17 PM

@CowperKettle Weird that a plane "aisle" is definitely not what its etymology suggests, especially when there is just one of it in the middle. That's not an aile, that's an allée!

#Worldle #382 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
⭐⭐⭐🪙
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

🌎 Feb 7, 2023 🌍
🔥 25 | Avg. Guesses: 4.96
🟥🟥🟩 = 3

globle-game.com
#globle

Didn't we just have one near here?

Eurocentrism rears its ugly head!

Wordle 598 4/6

🟩⬛⬛🟨⬛
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

@Robusto dot fr...

Wordle 598 4/6

🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜
⬜🟩🟨⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

2:40 PM

@jlliagre "dot fr..." ?

teuteuf.fr

Daily Quordle 379
4️⃣7️⃣
5️⃣6️⃣
quordle.com

@jlliagre Still not sure what you're trying to convey.

Isn't France in Europe?

@jlliagre Sometimes it feels that way, sometimes not.

Meh, I typed the wrong seed word as my first try in Octo today.

Geez.

@Robusto This message comes to you today from an old country, France, from an old continent like mine, Europe, that has known wars, occupation and barbarity.

2:47 PM

Hey, we're a young country and we've had wars, occupation, and barbarity too. Only we've upped the ante on all that.

@jlliagre We took your piddling defeat at Dien Bien Phu and turned it into a colossal train wreck, an Ozymandias of a conflict.

> It [aisle] was confused from 15c. with unrelated Middle English ile "island" (perhaps from notion of a "detached" part of a church), and so it took an unetymological -s- c. 1700 when isle did; by 1750 it had acquired an a-, on the model of French cognate aile. English aisle perhaps also was confused with alley, which helped give it the sense of "passage between rows of pews or seats" (1731), which subsequently was extended to railway cars, theaters, Congress, etc.

from etymonline

@Mitch Exactly! Illiterate British!

@Robusto Did you recognize my quote?

They'd throw in extra letters to impress the chicks

@jlliagre Alas, no. It sounds familiar, but I can't place it.

@Robusto French address on Iraq at the UN Security Council

2:57 PM

@jlliagre I didn't. We don't get the foreign press here.

Unless it is about the British royal family

@jlliagre No wonder I didn't. We were too busy renaming French fries "Freedom fries" ...

Feb 14, 2011 at 11:03, by Robusto

**Franco-American Spaghetti Western**

With Sparkling Freedom (not champagne)
And Patriot Bread (not Au Bon Pain)
We spit out all that beaujolais
To celebrate the U.S.A.

In our Americanized edition
Voila's lost to the magician
Fries are "freedom", never French
Chaise longue is your "American Bench"

Our women never put on rouge
Our winter sports eschew the luge
Our soldiers never camouflage
Our hospitals must not triage

Amid the buzz of language saws
We toss the salad called Niçoise;
We'd not have any strength to boast

Freedom fries don't taste as good unless they are abreuvé avec un sang impur.

You can't say that.

Your out of number, dude.

Urout of number.

@Robusto It was difficult to get the point of freedom fries in France because fries are generally considered Belgian here.

But waffles are?

3:02 PM

Ewer also possibly out of gender. Have you had a gender check lately?

Or did the bank return it?

@jlliagre Don't even. It was an artifact of Republican foolery here. Widely lampooned by rational people. "Take that, France!"

@tchrist If you've had a gender check, have you been engendered? Or does that come later?

Your freetsies they kanna be apreuvé only apreuvées doncha no.

Innumerate is to numbers as _____ is to genders.

Abrooveys.

A broovey is a bogeyman.

@tchrist I can year you accent.

I welcome your assent.

The ass end of assent is an Ent you must ascend.

3:10 PM

anent is Scottish.

@tchrist "Engine derate"?

Degenerate.

Tom is in one of his Joycean fugue states again.

Daily Octordle #379
5️⃣🕚
🕛🔟
3️⃣8️⃣
7️⃣6️⃣
Score: 62

3:26 PM

@Mitch Waffles are older than Belgium but newer than Belgica.

Daily Octordle #379
🔟🕛
6️⃣4️⃣
🕚9️⃣
8️⃣7️⃣
Score: 67

3:46 PM

@Mitch No waffling in chat.

‘Lo.

#Worldle #382 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
⭐⭐⭐🪙
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

Cocaine Bear (bear)

The Cocaine Bear, also known as Pablo Eskobear (sometimes spelled Escobear), was a 175-pound (79-kilogram) American black bear that overdosed on cocaine in 1985. The cocaine had been dropped by drug smugglers in the wilderness in Tennessee, United States. The bear was found dead in northern Georgia and was stuffed and displayed at a mall in Kentucky. It inspired the upcoming 2023 film, Cocaine Bear. == History == On September 11, 1985, former American narcotics officer and Kentucky-based drug smuggler Andrew C. Thornton II was trafficking cocaine from Colombia into the United States. After dropping...

I never knew that cocaine seems palatable to bears.

I heard it makes the mouth numb.

4:06 PM

@CowperKettle I don't want to give too much away but that movie is supposed to be a comedy.

A horror-comedy

A horror movie with comic elements

A horror movie with intentional comic elements.

Bear is a novel by Canadian author Marian Engel, published in 1976. It won the Governor General's Literary Award the same year. It is Engel's fifth novel, and her most famous. The story tells of a lonely archivist sent to work in northern Ontario, where she enters into a sexual relationship with a bear. The book has been called "the most controversial novel ever written in Canada". == Background == The book was Engel's fifth novel, and her sixth piece of published writing. Engel studied under author Hugh MacLennan, finishing her Master's of Arts at McGill University in Montreal in 1957. Her first...

I hope they make movie on this novel.

Hi

Good evening, Parz!

@CowperKettle YOu have interesting tastes

Word of the day: je ne sais quoi. I don’t know what it means, but it has that special something.

4:08 PM

haha

@parz Russian writers created a word based on this expression: неизъяснимый

Je ne sais quoi

Je ne sais quoi [ˌʒə nə sɛ ˈkwɑ] — (с французского) буквально «Я не знаю что». В искусстве XVIII века употреблялось в связи с невыразимой словами красотой (русская калька — распространённый до середины XIX века эпитет «неизъяснимый»). Определяет некую невыразимую суть искусства, нечто расплывчатое и неопределенное. Связывается с эпохой романтизма, когда художник в погоне за эмоциональной реакцией зрителя стремился к чувственной, мистической таинственности. Первое употребление выражения в описанном значении приписывается Жан-Жаку Руссо. Имеет аналог в итальянском языке — «non so che» («не знаю...

Interesting.

Very.

@CowperKettle I don't know what that means

@parz Is "parz" the Armenian word for "pure, clean"?

No, I’m thinking of changing my name to “paars”.

Dutch for purple.

4:11 PM

Ah!

> Today we have naming of Parz. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
Today we have naming of Parz. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighbouring gardens,
And today we have naming of Parz.

?

A poem by Henry Reed, 1942

Hm. I thought it was ChatGPT’s work.

@CowperKettle in 'неизъяснимый' what does 'ъ' do?

That says volumes in itself.

@Mitch softens something.

I forgot what.

4:13 PM

@Mitch The hard sign, it indicates that the preceding letter is a hard sound

eyebrows raised

and what does 'hard' mean?

The soft sign is ь, the hard sign is ъ

eyebrows raised further

removes the /j/?

4:14 PM

@Mitch Well, it's pronounced without a softening.. hard to express this. A soft Z would be pronounced as if you wanted to pronounce ZI, but stopped just short of making it.

So 'изъя' instead of /izja/ it becomes /iza/?

zeee (soft "z")

@CowperKettle will a simple “It’s complicated” do?

@Mitch With a soft "z", it would sound like "izija", but only the second "i" is very short

@parz Yes. It will do for 99% of phonetics.

so 'ъ' de palatalizes?

4:16 PM

Palatalizes? I dunno, I always forget this stuff.. :)

I like Japanese more than Russian. The only hard parts are the “ra re ri ro ru” sounds and the “fu” sound.

I started pronouncing "z" in different ways, and my cat is looking at me scared.

I find the technical vocab is much easier to understand than the 'hard'/'soft', dark, light, etc etc

"A weird man, stares at the monitor and pronounces z"

@CowperKettle Your cat knows things that you don't.

4:18 PM

@parz I wonder how they pronounce Lolita

According to IPA, I would guess…

> ロリータ・ファッション, rorīta fasshon

@Mitch Man, you beat me to it.

I go take a shower and come back a bit late and Mitch has stolen all my bons mots.

\ ɾo: ɾe:ta\

im not good at ipa

Too bitter about IPA, are we?

4

4:20 PM

Stolen your bolas?

In other news, are any of you Eurovision fans?

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@parz You're kidding, right?

No.

@parz The song contest? I don't know any persons who are fans.

4:21 PM

#AgoneyWasRobbed

You haven't seen my manifesto?

I have.

Oh.

It might be the Aussies’ last year in Europe.

Then I'll throw my feather boa over my shoulder and drink my tea

4:21 PM

Songs are too taste-based to be judged in contests, I guess.

No. No they aren’t.

Anything other than country is fine.

Or screamy stuff.

@CowperKettle That's what judgement is for,

@CowperKettle Contests are for losers.

@parz Oh, that's sad.

@Mitch what don’t you like?

4:23 PM

@parz What's not to like?

Lots.

Circus Mircus flashbacks

Lots.

Did Eurovision just happen?

No, the national contests are happening right now.

Was it fabulous?

Yaaaaaassssssssss.

4:25 PM

I don't know if this is an uncommon opinion, but ABBA is awesome but every instance of the Mamma Mia! show is so cringe it collapses into a black whole of cringe.

dont remind me of that… thing

I'm sure all the actors had fun, like they were transported back to doing their 8th grade musical.

Mar 2, 2011 at 13:47, by Robusto

I will say this about ABBA, though. They are the best band out of Sweden whose name is a palindrome.

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Quite the entrance.

4:28 PM

It's like Meryl Streep used it as an acting exercise to see how awful she could be, that she wrapped around the talent circle and lapped herself.

2

@Mitch I had an audio cassette of ABBA, and loved it.

@CowperKettle ABBA is awesome.

But that Mamma Mia! monstrosity is aweful.

@CowperKettle Did you mean KAPTMAH?

@Robusto It was Kenny who was constantly killed there :0

@Mitch Seriously? You are/were a fan of processed white disco music? The Captain & Tenille of the North?

4:33 PM

I’m going to tell you all right now:

@CowperKettle Oh, Lenin's tomb. But Lenin wasn't killed there.

LISTEN TO THE BENIDORM FEST 2023 SOUNDTRACK

Are you worried about Russia’s reputation in the world?

IT’S SO GOOD

A student from URFU studying for a historian left voluntarily to fight in Ukraine, and died aged 20. Served 3 months as an Chief Layer of a howitzer squad.

My sister studied for a historian there too.

4:35 PM

URFU?

And also went to Ukraine while studying, but take part in an archeology research.

@Robusto Ural State Federal University

user image

Rest in Peace.

@CowperKettle At least they gave him some gear and a uniform.

Yes, a proper uniform, and he managed to survive 3 months.

@CowperKettle Is Chief Layer a literal translation from Russian? I suppose it's from to lay an artillery piece, meaning to aim it?

4:37 PM

Jan 23 at 1:38, by Mitch

Did I ever tell you I went to a Debbie Gibson concert?

@Mitch I was trying to forget that. Give you the benefit of the doubt.

@Robusto Yes, старший наводчик

And at a much earlier age I was enamored with Olivia Newton-John.

He was responsible for aiming the gun

Yes.

4:39 PM

I once got a signed picture from her.

What could have been.

Amooooooooooooooooore

a single tear forms in the corner of my eye

@Mitch Hey, we were all young once. Don't take it to heart.

When I say 'from her', well, someone gave it to me.

And they got the picture out of some teen music magazine.

And they signed it themselves.

Oof.

4:41 PM

Oeuf.

At no point was ONJ ever aware that this particular chain of events was occurring.

ONJ?

Olivia Newton John @Robusto

It's what I call her familiarly

It's kind of a joke between the two of us.

Oh, FFS.

4:42 PM

She's funny like that

You wanna get quizzical, quizzical, is that it?

I sincerely thought that ONJ had signed that for me.

People can be so cruel.

They're probably still laughing about it.

But I suppose it is a good thing that I found out early.

Something like that could really strain a relationship.

@Robusto What's worse is they probably don't even remember.

Hmm...I'm now recalling other incidents of a similar nature.

With the 'people' (I use that term loosely) who pulled this prank.

@Mitch A tear. 💧

4:45 PM

@Robusto I know.

I don't know where that picture is anymore.

ONJ hasn't written since.

It's probably best to forget.

Move on.

I had my whole life ahead of me.

Things have gone another direction.

Olivia Newton-John - A Little More Love

> Her mother was born in Germany and had come to the UK with her family in 1933 to escape the Nazi Regime.

> Newton-John's maternal grandfather was German Jewish Nobel Prize–winning physicist Max Born;

> Olivia was a descendant of Protestant theologian Martin Luther.

5:00 PM

It's like that scene in Clueless where Tai burns all of Travis's letters after breaking up.

Not letters.

Memorabilia?

What do kids have these days to burn?

It's all toxic plastic-encased electronics.

Printed-out chat messages.

My friend bought an artsy copybook with thick paper and wrote out her favorite quotations from literature in English, and made some drawings to them, and gifted me. That's a great memorabilia.

@CowperKettle Wow, she really had that Princess Di look... or rather the other way round

@CowperKettle What's this 'printing' of which you speak?

> Deep learning speech recognition engine achieved remarkable results, detecting depression with an accuracy of 87% in male patients and 87.5% in female patients. medicalxpress.com/news/2023-02-deep-depression-speech.html

@Mitch I mean, nowadays people can print out chat messages and burn them.

When in 2018 I started feeling tired, Facebook started showing ads for free-of-charge psychologist help lines for depression. When I started on estitalopram, Facebook stopped showing them. When I stopped escitalopram to check whether I could go on without it, Facebook started again.

All the while I never mentioned anything about depression in my feed.

I think it can detect depressed/tired out condition by the user's behavior.

I Honestly Love You by Olivia Newton John

@CowperKettle possibly, but also there's a lot of confirmation bias. Those incidents stand out because they look like they're connected.

ペガサス Seiya

Hi Witch

5:11 PM

I wonder how soon there'll be an AI engine that will be able to ask questions on StackExchange, and integrate the answers into its knowledge.

@CowperKettle Somebody is surely working on that.

But not at SE

I dont know if there's been a comparison of Copilot (trained on SE code) and ChatGPT (whose doc source included open source github (I think) which is a lot bigger that SE)

@CowperKettle Yeah, that's an interesting area of research. But then what are you going to do with that knowledge? "Yep, you talk like you're depressed. Try to talk less like that."

Maybe try to further stratify, by measuring metabolites.

Make an app for helping people prescreen themselves for depression. Accumulate all audio records from the app. Follow up those thousands of people. Find some correlations.

@CowperKettle I don't think there are any known chemical tests that have any correlation at all with depression.

@Mitch There are numerous studies with candidate biomarkers.

@CowperKettle As you have noted many times before, there are lots of different kinds of depression, and lots of different signs and possible causes, and possible actions to take.

@CowperKettle Any good ones lately?

5:22 PM

user image

Acetylcarnitine, Reelin, CSF 5MTHF (treatment-resistant depression), CSF metabolites of BH4 metabolism (treatment-resistant depression)

And so on, and so forth.

> We show that in a clinical trial, plasma reelin levels decreased in patients with first-episode drug-naïve MDD and increased after treatment; further, plasma reelin levels allowed to distinguish drug-naïve patients with first-episode MDD from healthy individuals. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36103758

Injecting reelin in depressed animals makes them un-depressed (although it's a hazy topic, how do you measure "depression" in an animal)

@Mitch All this talk of depression still hasn't lifted my spirits any.

Isn't this pretty new? I was under the impression that biomarkers for -any- psychiatric situation had very very low predictability.

@Mitch Yes, they are all candidate markers, unconfirmed in proper studies.

@Robusto Listening to ONJ didn't make me any happier.

> Abnormal serum amino acids (10% of cases of refractory depression) pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36330595

5:27 PM

@CowperKettle How about for schizophrenia?

> • Serum kynurenine metabolite aberrances are a transdiagnostic feature of bipolar and schizophrenic patients.

• Quinaldic acid is an important state marker for psychotic symptoms. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666354622001740

I'd suppose anxiety though has very obvious and strong biomarkers? Adrenaline or ... what do people keep saying... cortisol?

In PTSD, there's insufficient cortisol elevation after stress and in the mornings.

In depression, there's chronically elevated cortisol sometimes. Sometimes normal.

The kynurenine connection was first noted in some tick-bitten patients with psychiatric symptoms.

I suppose there's a difference in utility of these biomarkers for acute instances and chronic problems.

Curiously, it's translated as "dog pee" (kynos + urine)

> Kynurenic acid was discovered in 1853 by the German chemist Justus von Liebig in dog urine, which it was apparently named after.

5:34 PM

> Prime Minister Narendra Modi has unveiled Asia's largest helicopter manufacturing facility in Karnataka that will initially produce Light Utility Helicopters (LUHs) for the Indian Army and Indian Air Force. This facility will be operated by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, govt owned aviation giant from India, who will be making choppers here. The first chopper to be made in this facility will be HAL LUH (Light Utility Helicopter), made for Indian Military.

@Vikas This is good.

> Putin’s address to the Federal Assembly may take place on February 22, the State Duma reported.

Is it the one which was suspended last year?

@CowperKettle I hope those dogs are feeling OK.

Urine was (still is?) used to cure leather and clean fabrics.

And still used metaphorically in phrases like "piss on it."

So they've played 50+ superbowls without ever having two black starting quarterbacks, until now.

In a league that is mostly black.

5:49 PM

They had to wait for Brady to retire, I guess.

Yeah, goats die hard.

@Robusto I've heard that if you have a tweed jacket get rained on, it kinda smells funny.

Dunno. I used to have a tweed jacket, once upon a time, but I never used it as a raincoat.

@user726941 I bet most of the owners and coaches aren't black

True.

5:54 PM

@Mitch Few of the owners of any enterprise worth billions in this country are either.

Superbowl XLI was also only the second championship game or series in any of the four North American major professional sports leagues to feature two African-American head coaches or managers, the other being the 1975 NBA Finals.

That leaves hockey and baseball...

3 hours later…

9:14 PM

You Know You're Dating a Russian Woman When...

@CowperKettle ^

Is that accurate? (Not that I'm going to try to date a Russian woman anytime soon ...)

@Robusto Back up plan.

You need to study up.

user image

@Mitch Hey, it was in my feed. I suspect it's just supposed to be humorous.

Look man the algorithm knows what it knows

Men still trying to figure out women. And destined to fail.

Wow I know youtube has been around a while but people produce a lot of stuff for it, stuff I would never imagine.

But like on purpose

with scripting

and planning

9:33 PM

Yeah. It's too late to be the YouTube maven of whatever you think you're good at.

10:05 PM

> Just found an origami porn channel, but it is paper view only.

@Robusto I don't know. It varies, probably

> Who’s there?
The World Health Organisation.
The World Health Organisation, who?
Yes.

10:35 PM

@CowperKettle I'd love to look at pictures of the structures designed by the dude who renovated the Louvre and created the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., but it's Pei-per-view.

Two can play at that game.

10:53 PM

Ieoh Ming Pei ( yoh-ming-PAY; Chinese: 貝聿銘; April 26, 1917 – May 16, 2019) was a Chinese-American architect. Raised in Shanghai, Pei drew inspiration at an early age from the garden villas at Suzhou, the traditional retreat of the scholar-gentry to which his family belonged. In 1935, he moved to the United States and enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania's architecture school, but he quickly transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was unhappy with the focus at both schools on Beaux-Arts architecture, and spent his free time researching emerging architects, especially...

I hope that someone revives the non-blocky architechture. With columns, and a lot of curvy lines. Monotonous buildings are depressive.

When I go past XIX century buildings, they are a pleasure to look at.

Hey, I feel as though I heard myself talking, to you, a year ago.

11:11 PM

There was a rich businessman in Moscow, and he built an eclectic house with several styles mixed, like in a fairy-tale. His mother said to him "before this, only I knew that you were an idiot, and now the whole Moscow knows this".

But now people love this building :)

11:27 PM

Yeah, that often happens.

Yesterday's nouveau riche is today's old money, yesterday's Kitsch today's art.

On the other hand, there was a lauded theater, of geometrical structure, and it was remodeled into another geometrical structure, and nobody cared. For normal people, it's just one kind of box remade into a different kind of box, with more room, so it's okay.

When a XIX century building is endangered, people are ready to protest, because it looks pleasurable.

They don't care that some high-hat architect made a very cool building, if it looks like a blob or a box.

Exactly.

Modern architects live in their own, isolated world.

11:44 PM

> Study: Psychology researchers often disregard scientific evidence due to lack of statistical knowledge

Psychology plays a joke on psychology researchers.

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