« first day (4513 days earlier)      last day (392 days later) » 

12:00 AM
Everyone was brutal.
 
@Cerberus Just not as systematic about it.
 
Not so sure about that.
The Athenians would slaughter entire islands.
The Assyrians entire cities.
Etc.
 
Well, the Athenians didn't crucify anyone they didn't like. Or slaughter them by the hundreds in spectacles.
Julius Caesar destroyed the Gauls, mostly civilians as it happens.
But that's not the point of the video.
 
I don't know about spectacles, but they sure slaughtered thousands systematically, as punishment for a revolt.
Civilians.
I would say most civilisations did this in the past, or all.
The Dutch certain did it as well.
 
Sure. It's just that the Romans were more systematic about it, not merely behaving as they did as opportunity prevailed. As I say, though, this argument is moot. The point of the video is ultimately about something different. Why were they so brutal?
 
12:27 AM
The Athenians and Assyrians and Aztecs were quite systematic. But I suppose the Romans had the largest and best organised empire.
> Athens invaded Melos in the summer of 416 BC and demanded that the Melians surrender and pay tribute to Athens or face annihilation. The Melians refused, so the Athenians laid siege to their city. Melos surrendered in the winter, and the Athenians executed the men of Melos and enslaved the women and children.
 
> Instead Of Traditional Warfare, Chinese Military Will Now Be Trained To Shout Wrong Pronouns At American Troops
 
@Robusto I would say, for the same reasons that other civilisations are brutal, and also groups of animals.
 
Very likely. Savages all.
 
Romans were plumb crazy.
 
1:36 AM
@Cerberus any good books in the library behind her?
 
@Mitch Most probably, if you read Kazakh?
 
Maybe she reads some good Kazakh sci fi?
@CowperKettle you'd think they'd have tried antibiotics and seen benefits already
 
> Furthermore, partisans on both sides of the political divide are publicly highlighting different problems facing the military, which may deter their followers (and their followers’ children) from considering military service
 
@Cerberus didn't Alexander's army work by including the newly conquered people into their army to help conquer the next group?
 
> Painting the entire U.S. military as either woke or extremist undermines public support for the institution and the people in uniform, and often deflects examination of concrete problems that are affecting military capabilities and readiness.
 
1:46 AM
@Mitch I wouldn't be surprised, I believe armies often do this.
 
(removed)
 
See also the Russian army now.
(removed)
 
@Cerberus how dare you
 
Oops.
Must have accidentally types some keys.
 
1:48 AM
Who were the ones who would wipe out villages except for one guy and let him go to inform other villages?
 
> The Wagner-affiliated channel that originally circulated the video claimed that being accused of brutality during a war is like getting fined for speeding during a car race, which is the same remark made by the channel following the summary execution of ex-Wagner fighter Yevgeny Nuzhin in November 2022.
 
The whole idea of 'war crimes' has a similar vibe
 
The holy idea of 'warg rhymes' has a similar vibrato.
 
@Robusto Exactly.
 
2:19 AM
@Cerberus Arabic ج ل س (jalasa) meaning to 'sit' converted with the م prefix @Cowp linked a few days ago that generates the names of places, hence مجلس (majlis) means 'the place where people sit'. Imported to Persian to mean 'the parliament' or whatever you want to call it, then imported to Qazaq
 
Ah, so from Arabic to Persian to Kazakh.
Makes sense.
 
Well, I'm assuming that's what's happened. It's unlikely to be a coincidence
 
It was never really used in Turkey?
I don't know the relative influence of Persia and Turkey on Kazakhstan.
 
Google says it's "Maclis", pronounced roughly the same, in Turkish, so yeah, it's the same there too
 
Can't anybody come up with their own words?
 
2:23 AM
Is it possible that it went to Kazakhstan from Turkish?
 
It's not borrowing. Nobody is giving back the words. It's stealing
 
And in Pakistan as well, called Majles-e-shura, something like that, all Arabic words imported into Farsi imported into Urdu, meaning "the place where people sit and exchange ideas"
 
Now do madrassa
 
@Cerberus no idea. The Turkish and Azerbaijani dialects (?) of Turkish use the Arabic word for 'mouse', while Azeri Turkish uses the Farsi word
@Mitch you're one to talk, American
 
@M.A.R. Good to know.
 
2:26 AM
Read that in the foreignest accent possible
 
@M.A.R. That's unexpected.
 
@M.A.R. there are more than 300mil to talk.
 
More than half are direct imports
Just like your words
 
Only one word of that sentence was borr... stolen
Also half the vocab of the teenagers across the world is taken from American English.
 
2:31 AM
The irony? Putin and Xi are probably talking in English
 
> The source of [Bitcoin] is still unknown, and it is surrounded by a great deal of mystery, problems, fears and dangers. Even now, the facts [about Bitcoin] are not clear to us, so we are unable to issue a fatwa concerning it.
 
@Mitch well, that's a pretty dank and deep rabbit hole. The ones that are supposed to be performance enhancers are placebo because Chinese charlatans really pretended successfully for a while that their plants are miracles. But one does not simply enhance the brain without serious side effects, so CNS stimulants have all the nasty side effects you know of.
For neurodegenerative diseases, we have drugs that are definitely not placebo, but they slow the progress of the disease, they don't enhance or cure anything.
 
@M.A.R. oh? Caffeine's side effects are pretty tame, but the main effects are significant (I've heard)
 
As far as I know there are no serious efforts on making memory enhancement pills or whatever. We need to understand a lot more about the brain first
 
@M.A.R. you do what you can do.
 
2:35 AM
You 'enhance' the brain with methylfenidate, and accept the risks
 
@M.A.R. there's no one 'memory' place in the brain or in substructures or even sub substructures
 
@M.A.R. IME dexedrine has far fewer side effects than caffeine.
 
> Controlled substance
Can cause rapid or irregular heartbeat, delirium, panic, psychosis, and heart failure.
 
@Mitch alkaloids are messy. Some don't feel anything, some feel a lot of things. Doses of caffeine that would consistently enhance the brain do make a hole in your stomach
 
They never give even a rough probability
@M.A.R. also headaches in stopping (again I've only heard this)
I also heard that one gets acclimated very quickly to caffeine, like 2-3 days the same dose does nothing
 
2:40 AM
@alphabet than caffeine? No. The thing with these CNS drugs is a lot of people and some medical professionals, unfortunately, keep calling them safe just because their LD50 (median lethal dose) is not low. But drugs aren't toxic just when they kill
@Mitch no it's totally true. Again, lots of gene polymorphisms and variability in response.
 
@M.A.R. are you saying caffeine is toxic at the levels normal people take normally nowadays?
 
@M.A.R. Just my personal experience of their short-term effects. In the long term IDK.
 
For a few people, it even helps with migraine attacks. For a lot of people, caffeine use is a risk factor for migraine attacks
 
Oops I mistook who was talking to who.
Yeah I'd expect Dexedrine etc to have long term use problems
 
@Mitch no, I'm just saying dextroamphetamine is also not a safe drug. I mean, it's safe to say no drug with any significant neurologic impact is safe
I'm assuming people don't drink crazy amounts of caffeine, but the other day somebody told me people drinking 5 liters of tea every day is normal, so what do I know
 
2:44 AM
Tea is literally weak tea
2
 
Also, the same amount of tea leaves has way more caffeine on average than coffee
 
But 5 liters of water would be somewhat excessive
Where 'somewhat' is somewhat of an understatement
 
@Mitch To be clear: I take it for purposes that are very legal and very cool.
 
@M.A.R. sure sure sure but when prepared as a drink, the strongest tea is just dirty water with a barely noticeable trace of caffeine
 
Neither me nor I suspect modern medicine can fully answer what lingering positive or negative effects its use may have. Of course, when it's validly prescribed, the pros undoubtedly outweigh the cons
 
2:50 AM
@alphabet TMI! I had no idea it was illegal and now Im trying to imagine what must be the very small intersection of both legal and cool
 
@Mitch yeah because the same weight of tea leaves would taste like crap
 
@M.A.R. haha yeah gross
Needs milk
@M.A.R. ohhh metadata or Ritalin. I had no idea. Yeah the entire country here of teenage boys is on ritalin
 
3:20 AM
@Mitch All the kids are on metadata
 
4:02 AM
 
4:36 AM
@CowperKettle 🙃
 
4:52 AM
@alphabet it's interesting that this site is censored and I had to use a VPN
Maybe there's some unflattering content there towards the Iranian theocracy
 
5:16 AM
@M.A.R. It's basically an advice column run by Salafi imams, the sort of people who most Muslims consider way too radical. I don't think they're "actively pro-terrorism" radical, but they're definitely "democracy is bad, credit cards are evil, buy a niqab" radical.
I'm not at all surprised that it's banned in Europe.
 
5:42 AM
@alphabet Europe? I live a bit to the East :)
Salafi? Sure, that explains it
In all honesty other sects' Imams would give the same answer more often than not.
@Mitch of course. I'm assuming the default state of Americans is to be on something 2/3rds of their life and asleep the rest
 
I never used bitcoin, although I first read about such ideas even before it first appeared. I used to read a popular computer magazine KompuTerra, it had articles about distributed systems based on public key encryption.. there was even a curious article on how to ensure transparent political voting with public keys. It was too complicated for me though.
> In Islam, lifelong celibacy or monasticism is forbidden. Marriage is encouraged for everyone.
Interesting.
In Christianity, celibacy was introduced as a means to prevent corruption in the Catholic Church.
Begetting kids in a high office easily leads to corruption.
> St. Peter, often seen as the first pope, as well as many subsequent popes, bishops, and priests during the church's first 270 years were in fact married men, and often fathers of children.
 
5:59 AM
@CowperKettle Islam's version of the ideal clergymen was people who mingled with people, with varying degrees of success. Especially during the sixth Hijri century, however, mystics and sufis appeared and transformed the idea of holy man to a reclusive hermit not unlike some Buddhist sects
It was a load of wash, of course. These reclusive hermits formed their own little cults of personality and walked around leeching off people and signing autographs
 
@CowperKettle Incidentally, IslamQA is very insistent that Muhammad had sex with a 9-year-old: islamqa.info/en/answers/44990/…
The real gem:
> you should note that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) grew up in a hot country, the Arabian Peninsula. Usually in hot countries adolescence comes early and people marry early. This is how the people of Arabia were until recently. Moreover, women vary greatly in their development and their physical readiness for marriage.
 
Maybe he just married her and consummated the marriage years later.
> Her father, Abu Bakr (r. 632–634), became the first caliph to succeed Muhammad, and after two years was succeeded by Umar (r. 634–644).
> Tabari appears to suggest that she was born during the Jahiliyyah (before 610 C.E), which would translate to an age of about twelve or more at marriage.
 
@CowperKettle well, I feel like the overcomplicated benefits of Bitcoin tooted by its supporters every chance they get is 1) unlikely to happen any time soon, and 2) a bit reductionist in that they clearly refuse to admit its faults and reject an (unbiased) cost-benefit analysis
@CowperKettle yeah which is where the Shiite and the Sunni muslims deviate in their beliefs.
 
I think that if celibacy was introduced to avoid corruption.. why not allow priests to have sex, but without having kids and without marrying? Maybe allow them to have sex blindfolded, with women who are unknown to them.
Or with added-reality eyeglasses masking the faces.
Something like this.
Fukuyama tells in his "Origins of Political Order" about the quaint scheme used by the Ottoman empire to avoid corruption by kidnapping Christian children and forbidding them to marry, but allowing to rule whole regions.
The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman times to the French Revolution is a 2011 book by political economist Francis Fukuyama. The main thesis of the book covers three main components that gives rise to a stable political order in a state: the state needs to be modern and strong, to obey the rule of law governing the state and be accountable. This theory is argued by applying comparative political history to develop a theory of the stability of a political system. The book covers several regions (China, India, Papua New Guinea as well as Western and Eastern Europe separately), and uses case...
The system gradually broke down.
 
 
1 hour later…
7:25 AM
@CowperKettle An obvious solution to the problem.
@M.A.R. Also not unlike Christian sects.
 
7:38 AM
@Mitch actually, antibiotics kill a lot of 'good' microbes in the intestinal flora, which is one of the major reasons, besides resistance, superinfection and a few other things, to limit antibiotics use to prescriptions and to rigid empiric rules
Also related is CDAD (C. Difficile Associated Diarrhea) and a plethora of other gastrointestinal problems associated with antibiotics use.
@Cerberus I suppose, but what I mean is the influence came from the East, I think, with conquests of India
 
8:02 AM
@Cerberus It may reduce the incidence of sexual abuse
 
8:39 AM
 
 
1 hour later…
10:06 AM
> When questioned about her treatment the patient remarked that she had followed her EyeMD’s suggestion of taking dietary riboflavin but stated that she felt “if 50 mg was good, I thought 500 mg would be better.”
To her sheer luck, riboflavin is water-soluble and does not accumulate in bodily tissues. Phew.
Old ladies.
Fragment of the Ukrainian drone found in Crimea
 
 
1 hour later…
11:31 AM
Does the word "near" have a weak form? I often pronounce it with a schwa (like the weak form of "for") when unstressed; I'm curious as to whether this is standard.
 
11:49 AM
#Worldle #424 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
⭐⭐⭐🏙️🪙
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
 
 
1 hour later…
1:05 PM
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive body detected, offensive title detected, potentially bad keyword in body, potentially bad keyword in title (105): (potentially offensive title -- see MS for details)‭ by Jimmy Zeng‭ on english.SE
fp feedback on autoflagged post: What is the origin of the word "fuck" [MS]
Autoflagged FP: flagged by @SmokeDetector, @Makyen, @Rob
 
1:30 PM
@CowperKettle if she applied this logic to methotrexate, she'd have died in a matter of hours
*she'd
 
@alphabet Most style guides, quite against logic and other existential laws of the universe, sadly do not allow footnotes to footnotes.
@M.A.R. The most intense hours of her life.
@M.A.R. All Americans take drugs to get to and stay asleep, so add 1/3 to that.
 
#Worldle #424 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
⭐⭐⭐🏙️🪙
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
Piece of kouglof!
 
@M.A.R. So you're recommending that you take antibiotics with your heroin so that the diarrhea of one will counteract the constipation of the other?
Yes, you're definitely recommending that.
@jlliagre I don't know what kouglof is but it sounds great!
@CowperKettle The progress has been amazingly quick. When GANs came out in ... 2015? they could reproduce fuzzy faces, and within 4 years it could make faces that look like normal faces as though they were real (but of course were entirely made up).
OK 2014.
By 2018 you had to look really close to see features that were artifacts of the generation (like extra teeth or fingers)
@alphabet Do you have an example context sentence or two where this happens (and where it doesn't)?
 
2:42 PM
#Worldle #424 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
⭐⭐⭐🏙️🪙
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
🌎 Mar 21, 2023 🌍
🔥 67 | Avg. Guesses: 4.79
⬜🟩 = 2

globle-game.com
#globle

Wow, what a guess!
Wordle 640 5/6

⬛⬛⬛⬛🟨
⬛🟨🟨⬛⬛
⬛🟩🟩🟨🟩
🟩🟩🟩⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
 
Hi!
 
Daily Quordle 421
6️⃣7️⃣
3️⃣8️⃣
m-w.com/games/quordle
 
For the French people out there (aka @Mitch)
Wordle 640 4/6

⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟩⬜🟨🟨
⬜⬜🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
 
@Mitch It happens in "The store is right near the school," but not in "Near the school there is a store," "I don't mean the store in the school, I mean the store near the school," or "The time is coming near"
These are consistent with being a weak form, along with the fact that it's never mandatory. It seems less felicitous with the adverbial use of "near", and marginal with the adjectival use
 
3:00 PM
@alphabet Do you mean unstressed for weak?
 
Daily Octordle #421
🕚🔟
4️⃣8️⃣
5️⃣7️⃣
9️⃣6️⃣
Score: 60
 
@Mitch By weak form I mean that it can be pronounced with a /ə/ when unstressed in certain contexts (like "can," "for," etc.) making it sound like "nurr."
I would avoid it before "here" ("It's right near here"); I'd need to think if there are other cases where it sounds wrong.
 
@Robusto word number 2 is quite fitting
 
@Robusto That chicken looking country again. Argh
 
Daily Sequence Octordle #421
4️⃣5️⃣
6️⃣7️⃣
9️⃣🔟
🕚🕛
Score: 64
 
3:05 PM
(I hypothesize that this is a less-common or regional weak form, since it isn't listed on typical lists of valid weak forms but seems quite natural to me.)
 
@Mitch Oh, for Pete's sake. Everybody got that in one look. And all its aspects, too.
 
@Robusto Exactly!
 
@parz Ça m'ennuie un peu
 
I’m just waiting for Bouvet Island to throw everyone for a loop thinking that it’s Nauru.
@Mitch :(
Daily Octordle #421
🕐6️⃣
5️⃣9️⃣
4️⃣🕚
🔟7️⃣
Score: 65
That’s what I meant to copy. PHEW.
 
@alphabet Sure, I suppose. For me anything unstressed will sort of fall away to a shwuh (or even less) in uncareful speech (my usual way).
And since I am (or rather will be when everyone recognizes it unconditionally) ruler of the world, then I am the literal ruler by which others measure their correctness, then that is what is correct.
For everybody.
 
3:10 PM
@Mitch Who would want to rule this mess?
 
Consequences for not following:
death.
Choose your poison.
I say old age.
 
I’m sorry, I’m hearing impaired, and I don’t want to follow you. I don’t understand how you could make my condition worse?
 
Others say doing the Tom Cruise magnetic glove climb on the outside of the Burj Khalifa.
@Robusto Maybe this time it -is- your monkey, it -is- your circus.
 
Il ne faut pas vouloir ajouter
À ce qu'on a, ce qu'on avait;
On ne peut pas être à la fois
Qui on est et qui on était.
Il faut savoir choisir;
On n'a pas le droit de tout avoir:
C'est défendu.
Un bonheur est tout le bonheur;
Deux, c'est comme s'ils n'existaient plus.
 
?!?!!?!
 
3:13 PM
@Mitch It's not my monkey. I left that back in Boston when I retired.
 
@parz I sometimes think, when times get bad, that yes it could get worse. Since it actually is not worse, hey things are not as bad as they could be.
@Robusto Your monkey didn't give you a second thought when you left.
Ungrateful monkey
 
@Mitch Oh yes he did! He's been hounding me to come back and play the game again.
 
That goddam monkey
 
Interesting that a monkey can monkey and a hound can hound and a monkey can hound—but can a hound really monkey? I think you need hands to monkey.
 
It's a very special dog that can do that
 
3:16 PM
All dogs are special.
 
Is this all thinly veiled double entendres?
 
You can monkey around without hands.
@parz What is it we're talking about when we talk about things?
Most likely lunch.
 
Meta-things.
 
It is all about lunch, innit?
 
What I am going to have for lunch
what I had for lunch
 
3:17 PM
You can monkey with your lunch on your own time.
 
Do you remember that lunch?
That was a great lunch
@Robusto Definitely need hands for that
I'm not some animal
at a trough
though
 
Well, you are some animal. And you could eat at a trough if you had to.
 
Or if it were a really good trough
Which reminds me...
 
I’m working on a Line Rider track for some reason.
 
What about a golden trough? Would you eat at one of those?
 
3:18 PM
Yay for compiling.
 
When I get executed for crimes against the universe (as a former ruler thereof)... guess what I want for my last meal.
It's not a trough but it's close.
 
Truffles?
 
well close but not in that way
24/7 all you can eat buffet.
 
If trough rhymed if tough, as it ought, than maybe something else.
 
near rhyme works
or as @alphabet says 'nuhrhyme'
 
3:20 PM
Back in a few ...
 
@parz There's an xkcd for that
 
Urhyme? The rhyme that precedes all other rhymes?
@Mitch you think I didn’t know that.
Tut-tut.
 
@parz nuh uh. a 'nuh rhyme'
accent on rhyme
 
Ah.
 
@parz Maybe I didn't.
also I didn't know what 'Line Rider' is.
Is that a new TV show about a talking car?
with David Hasselhof?
And instead of riding at night
or riding knights
 
 
you ride lines?
 
A person is on a sled.
So I abuse physics, as any normal person would do.
 
@parz OK it just stole my IP addr and is driving away my self driving car.
 
Good.
Exactly as planned.
Hopefully it makes it past the first border crossing to import the Roombas.
How full was your gas tank again?
 
@Mitch you're thinking so far ahead you'll render my profession obsolete
 
3:25 PM
@Robusto I've never understood truffles. Are they mushrooms or chocolate? Why would pigs not just gobble them down (mushrooms or chocolates) if they found them? Can they be -that- good? I don't think so.
 
Both are good.
 
@parz not together
 
People poison each other’s dogs for the legendary chocolate truffle, occuring only in Belgium.
 
@M.A.R. I used to see a lot of medical records (HIPAA compliantly!) and I noticed two things:
1) everybody has gallstones but they hardly ever pose any problems
2) cripes I forgot the other one
Oh yeah 2) people take -a lot- of medications
 
@Mitch painful is intense, yes. Methotrexate is an important example because 5 mg vials are administered in rheumatoid arthritis flares and 50 mg vials are anticancer. Due to medication errors and/or oversight on the physician or the pharmacists' part, there are examples of methotrexate poisoning that often lead to death
 
3:28 PM
@parz That's uncool. Dog's are living their best life.
 
Yeah. Truffles are worth the big bucks.
 
@Mitch what you referred to is called the cascade effect, avoiding which is one of the guiding principles of pharmacotherapy. You administer drug X, the patient shows an adverse effect, you administer drug Y, so another adverse effect shows up, and so on and so forth. It's easy and lazy to treat symptoms instead of digging into the cause
 
@M.A.R. wait... methotrexate... is that what you get with a slow infusion for bowel cancer?
 
Interesting fact: nearly all foods advertised as "truffle" in restaurants use artificial flavoring. Even when there are pieces of truffle in a dish, they'll usually use much cheaper, far less flavorful truffles, and then make up for it with the fake stuff.
 
Cependant, je n'obtiens que les petites pomm- les petites truffes, comment pourrais-je les confondre?
 
3:30 PM
(Real truffles are crazy expensive)
 
@M.A.R. But, and hear me out, sometimes that's all there is, is the symptoms. Like for psychiatric stuff.
But yes fewer drugs is probably better.
 
Incidentally It's what's considered the main difference in quality of care between developed and developing countries in healthcare. People think physicians in Iran, compared to, say, America, know less or prescribe worse drugs. That's true in less than 1 percent of the cases. It's instead that physicians in a better healthcare system are more vigilant about polypharmacy
@Mitch yep
 
@M.A.R. that's pretty wild... an amphetamine derivative for cancer therapy.
 
@Mitch of course. Many many ailments have no cure or need no cure
 
but yeah supposedly they watch you super carefully with the dosage because it can kill you.
 
3:34 PM
@M.A.R. Really interesting article I read a while back on psychopharmacology: thelastpsychiatrist.com/2007/07/…
(You may already know this but I found it fascinating, since it explains a lot about side effects)
 
@alphabet That's what I don't get. Everyday mushrooms are pretty good.
 
@Mitch no, it's not related. It's related to folic acid, @Cowp's favorite molecule. Folic acid is chemically modified to bind the enzyme more strongly (thus inhibiting it), and to become more selective for human cells. Without folic acid, cells can't proliferate. Cancer cells die, immune cells stay in lower numbers
 
@parz I don't know, easy enough if they're covered in dirt.
 
@M.A.R. This is also why it's an abortifacient; recall that folic acid deficiency causes birth defects.
 
@M.A.R. wait, what's not related?
 
3:37 PM
@Mitch I think you're seeing the m and skipping the rest, can't blame you. MTX is not Ritalin
@alphabet oof, a terrible abortifacient. For that we instead use drugs that work on the smooth muscles of uterus and cervix
Well, we don't use it. The conservatives are in power and abortion being murder has become canon
 
@M.A.R. what are the two I'm mixing up methotrexate and... what?
 
@Mitch methylphenidate is Ritalin, an amphetamine derivative. Methotrexate is the anticancer drug (more accurately an 'antimetabolite', since folic acid is a metabolite)
 
@M.A.R. oh. got it.
 
What's interesting is if you use a folic acid derivative that's selective for bacteria, you've made an antimicrobial agent instead. A.K.A. Sulfonamide antibiotics
Well, if you wanna be splitting hairs, some people don't like to call them antibiotics since they're synthetic, not natural.
 
Speaking of synthetic... hear me out... synthetic truffles.
if you like them so much.
 
3:51 PM
Synthetic synthetics: newer than AI!
 
The natural synthetics are so 20th c
 
Seriously, nylon? What even is that?
 
Better than polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride (I think there's about a 50% chance I remembered that one right)
 
Now you're just making shit up.
 
@Robusto Naw those are the original Irish lyrics to Danny Boy
@alphabet Oh wow, I've been wondering about that blog for a while, I couldn't remember what it was called.
 
4:20 PM
 
4:30 PM
@Robusto sniff
 
@Mitch Easy for you to say.
 
4:48 PM
@Mitch Have you read his book Sadly, Porn? I highly recommend it. (It's a 20-page pornographic story followed by like 200 pages of extensive social commentary, including a long rant about The Giving Tree and how everyone misinterprets Thucydides).
(He published it under the pseudonym "Edward Teech," you can find the Kindle version on Amazon.)
 
@alphabet Blackbeerd?
 
@Robusto +1
 
@Robusto Typo, I meant "Teach."
Anyway, if you like surrealism, highly recommended.
 
@alphabet Not in porn, I don't. No wonder the first word is sadly.
 
Relatively strong earthquake here! I was sitting on chair and working on laptop, everything shook including me LOL and just after 10 seconds I could see everyone in the street outside. Never happened before. It proves it was significant in my state.
 
4:59 PM
10 minutes ago
"Estimated magnitude 5.5 earthquake
Affected countries: India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan
5 miles from Pakistan · 12:49 PM"
@alphabet I have not. But that doesn't seem out of character.
I feel like I had read something already of his that was about how awful he thought The Giving Tree was.
 
@Vikas Oh, dear.
No damage near you?
Are you inside the circles on the map Mitch posted? I think you're just outside? But I don't remember your exact location.
 
@alphabet "He takes a special contrarian joy in slapping down the Uno Reverse card on traditional interpretations of primary sources..."
> It's only 500 pages, but the footnoted sections are in 10 point font which means that the entire book is more like 1500 pages
oh hell no
If you can't say something worthwhile in three words or less...
 
@alphabet Is he referring to the Thucydides Trap?
@Mitch Who can't?
 
googles furiously
@Robusto I said less than nothing in ... counting ...
I said less than nothing in 11 words
@Robusto That's not the "War was inevitable" guy was it?
 
5:24 PM
@Mitch Something like that.
Close-up using my new phone's detail camera (200 mpx), of peanut butter on bread.
I couldn't send the original because the file was too large.
 
5:41 PM
@Mitch Thanks for the image.
@Cerberus Yeah I don't think any damage in my area or even districts in nearby cities and towns.
@Cerberus Fortunately I'm there, the blue dot I've added.
I haven't felt any stronger than this before.
 
 
1 hour later…
7:16 PM
@M.A.R. Yes. One runner got inflammation of joints, and is getting this drug to dampen inflammation. Can't run, so he goes around making photos of runners. I wish there were more advanced drugs available.
 
7:30 PM
The Giving Tree is an American children's picture book written and illustrated by Shel Silverstein. First published in 1964 by Harper & Row, it has become one of Silverstein's best-known titles, and it has been translated into numerous languages. This book has been described as "one of the most divisive books in children's literature"; the controversy stems from whether the relationship between the main characters (a boy and the eponymous tree) should be interpreted as positive (i.e., the tree gives the boy selfless love) or negative (i.e., the boy and the tree have an abusive relationship)....
I heard something about Thycidides, but nothing about The Giving Tree
@Vikas I'm glad to hear you're okay!
 
@CowperKettle A tempest in a teapot. Silverstein wrote a lot of good stuff for children, but people are far and away trying to rewrite the book in their minds if they see bad stuff in there. My advice: if you don't like it, move on and find something that works for you.
 
Ah. Probably like the poem "My Papa's Waltz", which some people see as a description of abusive relationship (drunken dad beating up his son), some see as a description of nostalgia about a drunken by good-natured dad
Turns out there was even a Soviet translation.
 
8:30 PM
@CowperKettle Some neighbors were talking like it will happen again after few minutes or hours.
 
In seismology, an aftershock is a smaller earthquake that follows a larger earthquake, in the same area of the main shock, caused as the displaced crust adjusts to the effects of the main shock. Large earthquakes can have hundreds to thousands of instrumentally detectable aftershocks, which steadily decrease in magnitude and frequency according to a consistent pattern. In some earthquakes the main rupture happens in two or more steps, resulting in multiple main shocks. These are known as doublet earthquakes, and in general can be distinguished from aftershocks in having similar magnitudes and nearly...
 
It would be very mild here I guess.
Wouldn't be felt.
 
 
2 hours later…
10:42 PM
@Robusto No, he literally gives a close reading of almost the entire text of Thucydides. Yes, that is extremely weird.
 

« first day (4513 days earlier)      last day (392 days later) »