English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

That is ill-litteracy.

2

> c1330 Arth. & Merl. 8541 (Kölbing) Sche akeuered, par ma fay, & was yleyd in liter, Al mast liche an hors bere.

> 1470–85 T. Malory Morte d'Arthur xix. vii He ordeyned lyttyers for the wounded knyghtes.

As you make your bed, so you must lie in it. Comme on fait son lit, on se couche.

litter ≠ lictor, O Suetonius!

> 1606 P. Holland tr. Suetonius Hist. Twelve Caesars 51 A flash of lightning glaunced upon his licter, and struck his servant stone dead.

> Etymology: < Anglo-Norman litere, Old French litiere, (French litière) = Provençal leitiera, Spanish litera, Italian lettiera < medieval Latin lectāria, < Latin lectus (French lit) bed.

> La cambre eret mut bêle, mut gentiment parée,
La litière de pailes et d'orfrois aorneie,

12:21 AM

@jlliagre Venerable.

Car n’astoit pas d’iteii litière acosturneie?

Desor une litière bien faite et compassée.

I would think the pailes would be too scratchy, unless you were a calf.

In some ways they spelled things more clearly back then. :)

@tchrist These pailes weren't pailles but Egyptian draperies.

Oh.

12:38 AM

That explains it. Thanks.

You do think of draperies in the context of carried litters.

@tchrist That one wasn't carried being in a (bed)room, a cambre, Picard for chambre.

Yeah, those giant four-poster beds could have drapes.

I knew cambre already.

Still used in Chtimi.

The ca- > cha- thing is famous. Castles vs chäteaux.

In Paris but not Picardy. So we didn't get it.

> In some French dialects, including that of Paris (but not that of Picardy), Latin ca- became French "tsha." This was introduced to English after the Norman Conquest, in words borrowed from Old French such as chaste, charity, chief (adj.). Under French influence, -ch- also was inserted into Anglo-Saxon words that had the same sound (such as bleach, chest, church) which in Old English still was written with a simple -c-, and into those that had formerly been spelled with a -c- and pronounced "k" such as chin and much.

We got our castles early.

Cherries are more complicated.

12:54 AM

Does a patisserie usually have a tapisserie?

> The Old English name ciris, cyrs (known only in combination) was cognate with Old High German chirsa, chersa (Middle High German kirse, kerse, modern German kirsche), Old Low German *kirsa (Middle Dutch kerse, Dutch kers, Flemish keerze), all representing earlier (? West Germanic) *kirissa < *keresjâ, adoption of a popular Latin *ceresia, *ceresea, which was also the progenitor of the Romanic forms Italian ciriegia, Spanish cereza, Portuguese cereja, Provençal cereisa, cereira, French cerise (compare medieval Latin ciresum). The Middle English chery, chiri is not known till 14th cent.; it…

@Robusto Not a requirement but pourquoi pas.

@tchrist Umm I've seen this in novels very frequently.

@Cerberus You're literate. :)

It will be in any novel or text that has them!

1:03 AM

Stop somebody on Hollywood Boulevard and ask them what the last novel they read was. Blank stares.

Like my funny little Roman detective novels.

Well, most people may be stupid.

Of course.

@Cerberus Would that be a Roman roman à clef?

Not these.

Just entertainment.

They wouldn't know a palanquin from a paladin.

1:04 AM

More's the pity.

Lindsey Davis.

Only one of which could be construed to be a litter. :)

Oh but a palanquin isn't carried?

Right, you put it atop the elephant or whatnot.

Or at least not normally?

Or just on the ground.

1:05 AM

> A covered conveyance, usually for one person, consisting of a large box carried on two horizontal poles by four or six (rarely two) bearers, used esp. in South, South-East, and East Asia.

Oh, I see it has a very specific meaning in English.

Yes.

> 2001 Financial Times (Nexis) 5 May 18 Politely refusing the offers of the palanquin boys who carry elderly pilgrims up the 800 steps to the shrine, we walked slowly up the long staircase.

But that definition of yours suggests it is carried by humans?

I would think so.

I forget the name of the one on the elephant.

OK.

1:07 AM

@tchrist Howdah.

I guess you could also just call it a chair?

@Robusto That's it, thanks.

> palanquin carriage n.
1837 H. Lawrence Jrnl. July (1980) 35 Mr. Cotterill's conveyance was waiting for me. It was a palanquin carriage, shaped like an oblong box with a well below for the feet, holding four people and Venetianed all round.
1852 De Bow's Rev. May 469 The processions on this occasion are very lively, whilst the display of palanquin carriages adds to the gayness of the scene.
2003 Bristol Evening Post (Nexis) 6 Jan. Artefacts [at the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum] include..a bridal palanquin carriage from India, used for Hindu wedding ceremonies.

> From Portuguese palanquim, from Oriya ପାଲଙ୍କି (palôṅki), ultimately from Sanskrit पल्यङ्क (palyaṅka, “bed, couch, bedstead”), from परि (pari, “around, about”) + अङ्कस् (aṅkas, “bend, curve”).

Yes, it's from Portuguese.

> Origin: A borrowing from Portuguese. Etymon: Portuguese palanquim.

Etymology: < Portuguese palanquim (1515 in Correa Lendas da India), †palanquís (plural, 1545), †palanque (1535), perhaps via Kannada pālaki , pālakki litter < Hindi pālakī , pālkī palki n. or Marathi pālakī , pālkī in the same sense, ultimately < Sanskrit palyaṅka , paryaṅka bed, litter. Compare Oriya pālaṅki palanquin (see note below), Malay pelangkeng , pelangkin wheeled palanquin ( < Portuguese), pelangki litter (perhaps directly < a language of South Asia). The final nasal appears to have been a Portuguese addition as…

Chair:

1:10 AM

Aren't all chairs for sitting? :)

I guess that's what I would say, she sent her own chair to pick them up.

"holding four people and Venetianed all round"

Probably a fabric?

Or upholstery?

Right, those other pailes from Egypt. Or maybe persians, meaning blinds.

We always hear about upholstery, why never downholstery?

1:12 AM

Depends which way the gun is pointing.

Downholstery is when you holst it down, d'oh.

Jupiter from "The Planets" for 5 pianos - The 5 Browns

La H sirve para mucho más de lo que piensas...

A piano quintet.

Oh that's interesting. They added H- to UEVO so people knew not to say VEVO.

Same with hueso.

Werid.

She talks a bit about Gascón.

1:38 AM

@tchrist This sounds way better than I expected. The transcription isn't muddy at all, which is what I feared.

And dehors in French losing the F-.

@Robusto Yeah.

There's a question on Worldbuilding asking about the possibility of an insect falling about 6 feet and taking damage from the fall.

That makes me wonder: were bodily injuries ever described as "taking damage" before role-playing games popularized that phrase?

Seems unlikely.

Being injured.

If a bug couldn't fall six feet without hurting itself, that world few bugs would have.

Yeah. I don't think I've ever seen the phrase "take damage" used in, say, a medical context. I've seen words like "injury," "wound," and "trauma," and I've seen injuries described as causing damage, but I haven't seen people described as taking damage.

@CassieSwett I doubt it. And you never heard a chess player's move being described as more or less "accurate" before there were computers who could beat anybody and were used as a measurement of how well someone was playing.

1:49 AM

Mmyup.

@tchrist Hey, I write bugs that could fall the moon and not hurt themselves.

I could post a comment saying, "oh, you don't mean 'taking damage,' you mean 'being injured'"... but there's really nothing wrong with the phrase "take damage," I don't think.

What kind of axe fells the moon?

It's okay for people to use new phrases.

If you like piñas coladas.

1:51 AM

@tchrist A Fender Stratocaster when played by David Gilmour.

There's an exception to that rule, which is that it's never acceptable to use the word "analog" to mean "not electronic." If anyone does so, their punishment is that they may never again use numerals or figures without an electronic device 😄

@CassieSwett Unless they ask you to help them make something sound better to you, it's usually not something people appreciate being told.

Mmyup.

@CassieSwett I think this is one case where it helps to use the NGram viewer.

books.google.com/ngrams/…

@CassieSwett Analog is a magazine. Analogues are something else.

1:53 AM

@CassieSwett I think it is a mistake that non-native speakers may make as they're learning the language.

So "taking damage" takes off roughly in the '80s and goes on up from there, which supports the view that video games are responsible.

@Cerberus That's what it sounded like to me.

@Robusto No. D&D.

@Robusto I notice that the phrase "getting injured" has started to become dramatically more common; should I be worried?

Hurts.

@tchrist Hmm, OK. A combination of the two.

1:55 AM

@tchrist OK.

@CassieSwett Less informal is "being injured".

There wasn't any damage in Pong during the 80s.

Or was that the 70s?

It's all so long ago.

But getting injured describes the process, while being injured describes the state.

Ouch.

@Robusto I would say that is a more recent development.

Pong was 72. I knew it was very old.

1:57 AM

Now I'm trying to think of an example of a "was"-passive that would sound funny if it were replaced with a "got"-passive.

Did you get hurt?

Were you hurt?

@tchrist I was hurt to find out that Pong is 72.

"The spoilers got deployed prematurely, causing an uncontrolled landing in which all crewmembers got killed." That sounds pretty weird to me.

Yeah. We were so excited by it.

2:00 AM

@CassieSwett I'd use were killed instead of got killed there, and all is well. More or less.

There's a bit of difference involving intent or harm.

With get passives.

But passives don't work with accidents, do they? "My son fell off the slide and broke his arm" is the normal way to describe a fracture.

His arm got broke in the fall.

dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british-grammar/get-passive

"I broke my leg." That is the reduced form.

Se me rompió la pierna.

2:04 AM

I was literally just typing about Spanish.

Se me cayó el vaso.

@CassieSwett Weird in what way? I would say got is informal.

@tchrist This only describes usage of get, not that we always use get in those locutions.

@tchrist That guy must have bad ~~reflexes~~ reflexives.

If you said something like "Rompí mi pierna" (literally "I broke my leg") in Spanish, I think the immediate reaction would be something like "Gee whiz, why did you do that?"

Yes, it just doesn't sound right.

The leg got broken on you.

Like the glass.

That got broken on you when it someone let it drop off the table.

Probably you.

2:07 AM

Conversely, of course, if you say something like "I fell off the slide and my arm got broken," it almost sounds like you're saying that the breakage of your arm was a completely unrelated event that happened at the same time only by sheer coincidence.

@CassieSwett To swap places with @Robusto for the moment, Google NGrams has some strange artifacts in it that don't seem to be good reflections of reality. There are a number of phrase searches that show sharp increases in the past 5-10 years, kind of like you see for 'get injured'. It is most likely some strange dating artifact in the OCR of books, or a disproportionate selection of books having such terms more and more recently.

Don't date OCD book types.

@Mitch That is always possible.

Love finds a way

My car got broken into last night.

2:09 AM

But get for be with passives is simply a more recent phaenomenon, isn't it? Or at least in print.

Yep feels kinda caʒ.

@Cerberus There may very well be a sharp rise in usage of terms in the past ten or so years for very particular words or phrases, but I've seen enough of them in NGrams to be wary of it being real. Or at least the simpler explanation is 'NGrams is being weird'

Sure.

But we know this without needing Ngrams.

And it's not ten years but decades at least.

He got hoodwinked.

He got snookered.

Got he, now.

2:12 AM

He got wonky.

All of these sound natural to me, but at least until recently informal.

@Cerberus for 'getting/being injured'?

I think so too.

@Mitch Yes.

But if you get hurt, it doesn't sound so informal, does it? Maybe it's just nursery talk.

2:13 AM

@Cerberus The image above only shows a sharp rise in the past 5-10 years.

Informaller than if you are hurt.

I think somehow got can feel more punctive.

@Mitch Maybe, but I see a rise from 1980.

@Mitch I think it's semi-useful, not definitive. God knows, I'm on record as asking for people to quit using it so blithely on EL&U.

@tchrist That is because the normal passive of be + past participle is becoming less frequent.

2:15 AM

Maybe?

So now, to many speakers, be + past participle sounds more like being in a state, as Robusto said, than being affected by an action.

It's hard to form a perfect/preterite with be.

I was hurt or I was hurting?

It hasn't been perfect for much longer.

a slow rise is totally 'ok'. a sharp rise asks for an explanation that is likely to be an event... but if a lot of unrelated terms have a similar rise, it is most likely an artifact.

But I got hurt is completed.

2:16 AM

I am seen has meant I am being seen for a long time—but now less so, for many speakers.

The perfect/imperfect distinction in English isn't always strong, particularly with be.

@Robusto 'blithely' is the operative term. It's a good tool that is not simple.

I am being seen used to be redundant and not used.

It sounds off.

Maybe it's weird with that verb.

2:18 AM

I'm being harassed!

Yeah.

You probably need a verb with the right Aktionsart to see it.

I am harassed!

I got harassed.

I was harassed at Market Street.

I was being harassed at Market Street.

Oh, I've looked at this for too long now.

Yuck!

And it's 4 AM.

2:19 AM

Bedtime.

Ere cockcrow.

@tchrist Yeah, I'd want a when... with that.

It's summer time now, so the sun rises an hour later.

Summer my ass.

Feels like winter, yes.

It's going to snow overnight again, and get down into the teens.

Oh, snow, even.

We had snow two weeks ago as well!

Which is rare here.

2:20 AM

Woke to freshfallen snow yesterday.

It melted, but still.

Though they say a white Easter is more probable here than a white Christmas.

In general.

You're stealing my lines.

Oh?

My boyfriend always says this.

Yesterday:

♫ I'm dreaming of a white Easter,
♫ Just like the ones it used to snow.

It might be the same over most of the northern hemisphere.

Oops.

2:23 AM

The snows of yesteryear fell oft at Paschaltide.

Less expected of late.

In the American South, church services for Easter Sunday were held outside. I've heard.

We can often sit outside in the sun at Easter.

Stephen Colbert's Long Story Shorts: Tolkien Reading Day

And so can I and so can any man, if your bottom is protected by snow pants.

I don't know. It tends to green up here around Easter these days. But probably from recent snows.

2:52 AM

I had a dream in which I was Darwin and had to take part in a debate. Only I was not Darwin, so I had to pretend to be Darwin.

And another dream in which I was taking part in sending-off of several people to the war. And then I lived for some years, and learned of their subsequent fates. And then the sending-off repeated (I was brought back in time), and I did something differently to prevent the dying of one or several of them. And so on, several times.

I had taken 2 tablets of Mg + B6 just before sleep, and again the dream started to be recoverable upon awakening.

Or maybe they became more vivid. It's impossible to tell without an advanced brain scanner, I guess.

3:17 AM

And there was a third dream, also with movement back in time. This time I needed to survive the taking of a plane in hostage by terrorists, back in the Soviet times. I don't know how that ended. I woke up in the midst of events.

3:41 AM

Vivek Ramaswamy

Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy (; born August 9, 1985) is an American entrepreneur, author, and conservative political activist. The author of Woke, Inc. (2021) and Nation of Victims (2022), he was labeled "one of the intellectual godfathers of the anti-woke movement" by Politico.After working as an investment partner, Ramaswamy founded the biopharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences in 2014. Since 2020, he has written and spoken out against stakeholder capitalism, big tech censorship, and critical race theory. After leaving Roivant in 2021, Ramaswamy co-founded Strive Asset Management, an investment...

Oh. Republicans in the USA may drive this guy to be their candidate in the election.

There will be two Indians heading the USA and the UK.

Vikas

@CowperKettle And garnet red lines too.

LOL

4:03 AM

> Geoff Hinton used to think AGI was 20 to 50 years away. Now he thinks sub-20 is quite possible. He also thinks it “not inconceivable“ that a superintelligence decides to wipe out humanity. cbsnews.com/news/…

Geoffrey Hinton

Geoffrey Everest Hinton (born 6 December 1947) is a British-Canadian cognitive psychologist and computer scientist, most noted for his work on artificial neural networks. Since 2013, he has divided his time working for Google (Google Brain) and the University of Toronto. In 2017, he co-founded and became the Chief Scientific Advisor of the Vector Institute in Toronto.With David Rumelhart and Ronald J. Williams, Hinton was co-author of a highly cited paper published in 1986 that popularised the backpropagation algorithm for training multi-layer neural networks, although they were not the first...

This looks more and more like the intro to Terminator 2: The Judgment Day

forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2023/03/24/…

4:21 AM

Word of the morn: thaumaturgy

4:45 AM

People eat more bananas than monkeys.

M.A.R.

6:48 AM

@CowperKettle ha, Edge of Tomorrow

Such a tempting concept, isn't it

Vikas

@CowperKettle Terminator: Rise of CowperKettle

7:02 AM

@M.A.R. Yes, it was odd.

I wonder if I really have such dreams regularly, only keep forgetting them. And only after taking Mg+B6 they become recoverable.

I wonder what would happen if I take not 200 mg of Mg but 400 mg or more.

Hypermagnesemia

Hypermagnesemia is an electrolyte disorder in which there is a high level of magnesium in the blood. Symptoms include weakness, confusion, decreased breathing rate, and decreased reflexes. Complications may include low blood pressure and cardiac arrest.It is typically caused by kidney failure or is treatment-induced such as from antacids that contain magnesium. Less common causes include tumor lysis syndrome, seizures, and prolonged ischemia. Diagnosis is based on a blood level of magnesium greater than 1.1 mmol/L (2.6 mg/dL). It is severe if levels are greater than 2.9 mmol/L (7 mg/dL). Specific...

> For instance the overall prevalence of hypermagnesemia was 3.0%, especially in males in Iran.

That explains all the man-with-wings figures etched in stone in Iran.

A lot of vivid dreaming.

Faravahar

The Faravahar (Persian: فروهر), also known as the Foruhar (فروهر) or the Farre Kiyâni (فر کیانی), is one of the best-known symbols of Zoroastrianism, an Iranian religion. There are various interpretations of what the Faravahar symbolizes, and there is no concrete universal consensus on its meaning. However, it is commonly believed that the Faravahar serves as a Zoroastrian depiction of the fravashi, or personal spirit.The Faravahar is one of the best-known and most used pre-Islamic symbols of Iran and is often worn as a pendant. Despite its traditionally religious nature, it has become a secular...

Maybe there's a lot of Mg in drinking water in Iran, or maybe the prevalence of kidney disease is high.

7:51 AM

@Robusto Because upholstery has benefits, and downholstery has malefits. And since malefits does not exist as a word, neither does downholstery.

M.A.R.

You haven't been to an Iranian school if you think downholstery doesn't exist

@CowperKettle animal bird hybrids are really common, so is attributing divine nature to them

8:22 AM

Mikhail Kalashnikov

Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov (UK: , US: ; Russian: Михаи́л Тимофе́евич Кала́шников, IPA: [kɐˈlaʂnʲɪkəf]; 10 November 1919 – 23 December 2013) was a Soviet and Russian lieutenant general, inventor, military engineer, writer, and small arms designer. He is most famous for developing the AK-47 assault rifle and its improvements, the AKM and AK-74, as well as the RPK light machine gun and PK machine gun.Kalashnikov was, according to himself, a self-taught tinkerer who combined innate mechanical skills with the study of weaponry to design arms that achieved battlefield ubiquity. Even though ...

The inventor of the AK gun was born the 17th child in a family with 19 children, of whom only 8 survived to adulthood.

M.A.R.

8:38 AM

Just a small anecdote, in Switzerland it is completely legal. Almost any sort of pirating is allowed for private use. The current laws are from a time when nothing like that existed and are very liberal when it comes to private use. Music companies have lobbied several times to modernize the law, but Switzerland being a democracy means it got shot down during public vote :). There even was a case where it was ruled legal to own and use a Dreambox - a device that among other things was capable of decrypting a pay-TV channel for free - to organize movie nights with friends. — Yanick Salzmann 24 hours ago

Now they're just showing off

9:20 AM

> On a lakeshore:
“Come in number 9 your time is up!”
“But we’ve only got 8 boats”
“Number 6, are you in trouble?”

@M.A.R. Switzerland got rich by serving a lot of criminals as a cash deposit vault, so no surprise here. :)

All countries and systems have their downsides.

12:45 PM

Today was the warmest 27th March since 1978 e1.ru/text/spring/2023/03/27/72167639

Vikas

1:16 PM

@CowperKettle We had a good March. We were talking like summer has hit too early this year at the end of February. But last few weeks there was rain and cool wind. Pleasant so far. But looks like it would change rapidly from now on.

Building an Air Conditioned Suit for the Summer

@Vikas Indian scientists should invent special air-conditioned spacesuits for use in the summer.

For use not in space but in India.

Testing 3 Cooling Items: Ice Vest, Neck Fan, & Cooling Spray

A Cooling Vest that Manages Heat Stress & Increases Productivity

Or maybe undergound passages for summer use. Underground streets, like in northern cities in Canada.

This will benefit the economy. Less heat exhaustion, work will be more efficient.

But they must be extra expensive. To dig whole streets underground.

Modi ji, in his eternal wisdom, should come up with better ideas.

@CowperKettle 1) Geoff Hinton is kind of a big deal, not only in breakthroughs he made when younger, but also a research program over the years that kept on creating amazing things. He made 'deep learning' what it is today.

2) he was famous for saying ~10 years ago that no one should bother going into radiology because within 5 years there would be no need for them - AI would eliminate their jobs (because the algorithms were going to be so good). That has obviously not panned out.

Currently, vision algorithms are only used in practice very little of the time and only as an aid to human radiologists.

1:34 PM

Yes.

But translation engines have gotten ultra-impressive.

So at least in some respect, AI has improved humanity.

Thus far.

People who only know Russian can freely read articles on PubMed.

At least I hope so.

Of course, there will be some mistranslated sentences, but the gist of a study could be understood.

Most people think that there will be no reduction (in the very near future) in radiology jobs, only radiologists will use vision algorithms to help out (and as usually happens with situations like these it will either a) increase the need for more radiologists or b) increase the expectation of throughput and possible burnout.

@CowperKettle Yes.

People say that at Soviet factories, workers hated innovators, because once some tool was improved, the authorities demanded an increased production rate.

But as an analogy, regular people can get away with getting an auto translation (eg from google translate), but if you want a -reliable- translation, it takes a human (currently)

@CowperKettle Amazon distribution factories have a similar difficulty.

@CowperKettle To be self-contradictory, the most reliable translations are done in scientific or legal areas because the grammar and vocabulary is so constrained.

But you don't want to have any kind of mistakes.

I've added 900+ English/Russian translation terms to Multitran, a dictionary widely used by translators here. multitran.com/…

@CowperKettle Because monkeys don't taste as good

1:41 PM

Yes :)

@CowperKettle Oh yeah 'burpee'

The last term I added was рандоль, a kind of proper name for beryllium copper. I don't know the etymology of рандоль though. It's the term used in the Soviet/Russian army, which employs this metal in different parts.

Jupiter by Gustav Holst

@tchrist ^ This is better than it has any right to be.

But I forgot that science/medicine is also rife with neologism and polysemy which poses problems for autotranslation.

The term left of boom also was quaint.

A specialized military slang term.

1:44 PM

@Robusto is that a ...bass sax?

Yes.

blushes

snort

@CowperKettle I dont know what that means.

@Mitch "before the bomb explodes"

I didn't know you could just have a URL to forvo like that. Does it imply that it will get put on a queue for people to supply a pronunciation?

@CowperKettle ah got it. military slang.

It's about a timeline. "Left" of boom means left on the plot.

You know what? Fuck Worldle today. I'm not chasing all over hell looking for an island chain that looks like what the cats left on their breakfast plates.

1:51 PM

@Robusto pfft

🌎 Mar 27, 2023 🌍
🔥 73 | Avg. Guesses: 4.76
⬜🟩 = 2

globle-game.com
#globle

Now there's a map game.

South Pacific Island chains can just go under water

Except for the Galapagos. And Hawaii.

And Samoa.

OK a lot of exceptions.

Nauru? They can go to hell.

Greenland is already going under water.

Not them exactly.

Just their maps

@Robusto Geologically speaking, as the ice on top melts, the land mass underneath will rise.

It will rise like leavened bread?

1:54 PM

A lot of the sea level rise around the world is coming from ice runoff from Greenland

@Robusto uh more like a ravioli bobbing to the top of the boiled water?

And Antarctica.

OK that's not right either.

@Robusto yes

the tectonic plates are riding on top of liquid magma. The ice on top of the plates is weight enough that it is pushing the plate down.

Supposedly the baltic sea near Finland/ Sweden is moving away from land (is that the right way to say it) because that land is rebounding (moving up) because of the ice sheets only recently (4k years?) receding there.

They're tectonic plates that don't taste very good.

So all these continent pieces are bobbing along on top of the magma like ice floating on water. but that's a confusing metaphor.

Daily Quordle 427
7️⃣9️⃣
4️⃣6️⃣
m-w.com/games/quordle

Sea levels will rise most places but the coast of Greenland will get bigger (eventually)

@Mitch: The Quordle folks, Merriam-Webster, apparently have a Spelling Bee-type game now.

@Mitch That's a load off.

2:01 PM

@Robusto Worldle has a 'guess where the photo was taken' game.

I'm not talking to Worldle today.

@Robusto Litterally

They know what they did.

I think of the 'nearby country' that has no picture at all as kind of an extra challenge.

Yeah. What's up with that?

I guess it's a stealth country.

2:03 PM

You have to figure out what island chain is 'bordering' over possibly thousands of miles of ocean.

It'd be like guessing which countries will be part of the British Empire but it's 1500.

Wordle 646 4/6

🟨⬛⬛⬛🟨
⬛⬛🟨⬛⬛
⬛🟨⬛🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

I did the Spelling Bee in less than a minute this morning. Only 33 points for Genius. I guess that's a new record.

Blossom Puzzle, March 27
Letters: E I P L R S Y
My score: 175 points
My longest word: 8 letters
🏵 🌻 🌼 🌷 💐 🌸 🌹 💮

Play Blossom:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/games/blossom-word-game

Daily Octordle #427
🔟7️⃣
3️⃣9️⃣
6️⃣5️⃣
4️⃣🕚
Score: 55

2:22 PM

Well, Gary, I'm not sure how exactly do you plan to stop it.

10 hours ago, by CowperKettle

People eat more bananas than monkeys.

I've never eaten a monkey. Not ever.

(I'm not sure that this sentence is grammatical. Maybe it should not include the "do you" subject-verb inversion)

@CowperKettle It's fine. Examples abound.

@Robusto I only saw monkey being eaten once, in an Indiana Jones movie

That was a high yuk factor.

2:24 PM

36 secs ago, by Robusto

That was a high yuk factor.

Also a high ick factor.

Eating of human brains caused prion disease.

> In the 1950s, Carleton Gajdusek began research which eventually showed that kuru could be transmitted to chimpanzees by what was possibly a new infectious agent, work for which he eventually won the 1976 Nobel prize.

1850s: germ theory not yet developed
1950s: germ theory developed, viruses researched, prions diseases discovered

In a mere 100 years.

> Zakaria asked Stewart, host of "The Problem with Jon Stewart" on Apple TV+, about whether or not Trump should be indicted, citing concerns that Trump, who received 74.2 million votes in 2020, could become a martyr for those who believe he is being treated unfairly by the justice system.

"I think the law should always take into account someone's popularity," Stewart replied, sarcastically. "I mean, what — what's happened to our country? It's as though you can't even commit financial fraud anymore."