TIL: in many AAVE dialects, "He been sick since last week" is grammatical if "been" is unstressed, but ungrammatical if "been" is stressed (see page 6)
Why do people become instantly enraged while driving? A taxi driver yesterday was all gregarious and chatting, and as a car intruded ahead of us (at a crawling speed, approaching a toll booth at the train station parking lot) he was all rage. There must be some ancient driver rage circuit in the brain. Checkmate, evolutionists.
> The mind-blowingly hot global sea-surface temperatures are somehow continuing to go up even higher into uncharted territory, on April 1, 2 reaching 21.1°C (70.0°F) for the first time.
latest CO2 reading is the highest ever reported at Mauna Loa. Daily CO2 Apr. 2, 2023 = 422.54 ppm Apr. 2, 2022 = 420.86 ppm
Cultivator No. 6 was the code name of a military trench-digging machine developed by the British Royal Navy at the beginning of World War II. The machine was originally known as White Rabbit Number Six; this code name was never officially recognised, but it was said to be derived from Churchill's metaphorical ability to pull ideas out of a hat. The codename was changed to the less suggestive Cultivator Number Six to conceal its identity. The name was later changed to N.L.E. Tractors. Winston Churchill sometimes referred to the machine as his mole and the prototype machine was dubbed Nellie. It...
> Churchill explained what he had in mind to Stanley Goodall, who was then Director of Naval Construction. In October 1939, the project was handed over to J.H. Hopkins.[11] Hopkins, who had had a distinguished career in ship design, was given the temporary rank of assistant director and was tasked with bringing together a team of designers who would make Churchill's machine – his mole as he sometimes called it – a reality.
Project Habakkuk or Habbakuk (spelling varies) was a plan by the British during the Second World War to construct an aircraft carrier out of pykrete (a mixture of wood pulp and ice) for use against German U-boats in the mid-Atlantic, which were beyond the flight range of land-based planes at that time. The plan was to create what would have been the largest ship ever at 600 metres (2,000 ft) long, which would have been much bigger than even USS Enterprise, the largest naval vessel ever, at 342 metres (1,122 ft) long. The idea came from Geoffrey Pyke, who worked for Combined Operations Headquarters...
@CowperKettle I sometimes become angry when someone is not following driving rules and put my own vehicle at risk. But I don't speak anything. I just say words like "idiot" in my mind. It's probably because we know road accidents can be terrible and fatal and may not give another chance to go on road again.
But I don't think it's totally wrong if I actually yell "idiot" to them if they are the ones making mistakes. However I don't say it because you never know you may have to physically fight him if it eecalates 🤣
@CowperKettle how else for a battered, disorganized army with outdated tech and inept higher ups to win against Saddam's modernized army? It was and is a holy war for them.
The most common name for it in Farsi is "defa'e moghaddas". The holy defense.
Right up to the name of the course the turbans make us study.
Personally, and we've probably had this discussion before, Iraq was the clear aggressor and the side committing egregious war crimes like chemical warfare against civilians and such. I feel like that tends to get ignored a lot as the admittedly crazy atmosphere of the war on the Iranian side is the center of attention
In the city of Nizhny Tagil, a woman did not allow her daughter go outside, so the schoolgirl made a rope of bed linen and tried to climb down from the 5th floor. She fell, and her leg got hit or stuck upon some obstuction while she was falling, so that she landed without a part of her leg.
Turns out the surname Moghaddam means 'leading, preceding'. from a Persian spelling of the Arabic title muqaddam (from the root qdm 'to be in front of') denoting various civil or religious officials (literally 'someone placed in the forefront or at the head of something').
> But, good my brother, Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven; Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, And recks not his own rede.
> Gorgone macarea is a moth found in the Amazon jungle, whose whole diet consists of drinking the tears of sleeping birds.
Mayor of Yekaterinburg has signed a decree on holding civil defense drills, maintaining bomb shelters. and updating population/company evacuation plans. e1.ru/text/gorod/2023/04/04/72190433
My primroses are ever of the evening, a different family altogether.
> It flowers in early spring, one of the earliest spring flowers in much of Europe. ("Primrose" is ultimately from Old French primerose or medieval Latin prima rosa, meaning first "rose".)
Oenothera is a genus of about 145 species of herbaceous flowering plants native to the Americas. It is the type genus of the family Onagraceae. Common names include evening primrose, suncups, and sundrops. They are not closely related to the true primroses (genus Primula).
== Description ==
The species vary in size from small alpine plants 10 centimeters tall, such as O. acaulis from Chile, to vigorous lowland species growing to 3 meters, such as O. stubbei from Mexico. The leaves form a basal rosette at ground level and spiral up to the flowering stems. The blades are dentate or deeply lobed...
Oenotherae are pretty plants.
> The modern name Oenothera was published by Carolus Linnaeus in his Systema Naturae. Its etymology is uncertain, but it is believed to be derived from the Greek words οίνος θήρα (oinos thera) 'wine seeker'.
I had a fine Oenothera macrocarpa plant but the plumbers destroyed it when they dug up my sewer line to the street.
> A child is born with no state of mind, blind to the ways of mankind
@jlliagre The Road to Ruin? The Boulevard of Broken Dreams? It's a long way to Tipperary.
@Vikas Same here. I add a few adjectives to 'idiot' though.
@M.A.R. True, but the cat pic has more of a vibe.
It is my red hot take that dogs are much much smarter than cats (by smart, I mean able to adapt and figure out things). But what they put that smarts to is trying to please humans which comes across as subservient, lacking will.
@CowperKettle I'm convinced
... of not buying peanut butter from this guy. He's already tampered with the bottle, breaking the seal. Who knows what he's put in there, Tylenol?
@CowperKettle 'para' = around, along, 'ballein' = to throw (> ballistic), but also to dance > ballet, ballerina
So speaking in French is dancing around things.
@jlliagre I have fond memories of learning the manifold nuances of the differences between parole and langue, or rather I have fond memories of those memories but not the memories themselves, so I really don't know any more.
@jlliagre With the Claude Lalouch drive through Paris, I was a bit concerned for his safety. A number of times going through red lights and going around the back of garbage trucks backing up.
@Mitch The camera was fixed to the front of a car close to the ground, which accentuates the effect of speed. There were a few people there to watch the dangerous crossing points but we learned later that the car crossed the Rue de Rivoli without any visibility believing that the lane was clear but the driver was just lucky, the person in charge of watching was not ready for some reason.
@Mitch Kid song indeed, although many (most) of them have a "bawdy" double sens (what you call double entendre.) Diguedon is a nonsense word, although close to Ding dong (a bell sound). Several other songs have digue or digue dondaine in their lyrics.
@Mitch I don't remember exactly when I first saw that short movie but I don't believe that was in a movie theater. Possibly on a VCR...
Ha ha, the driver had his licence taken away... for a few minutes. Après le tournage, convoqué par le préfet de police, ce dernier lui a retiré son permis de conduire (on voit dans le film que Lelouch a brûlé plus d'une dizaine de feux rouges et n'a pas respecté autant de priorités à droite) pour le lui rendre quelques instants après : « Je m'étais engagé à vous le retirer » me dit-il. « Mais je n'ai pas précisé pour combien de temps »
@Mitch Google Translate thinks it's Bulgarian. If you translate "Дълго си мислех че в действителност той е италианска вдовица" as Russian, it comes up with "For a long time, I don’t think she’s really an Italian widow" although the dialogue (and the Bulgarian translation) says "For years, I thought he was an Italian widow".
...Which may seem odd, but I guess a priest in a cassock might be misidentified.
> Luque, 44, is one of the most prolific scientists in Spain. He has published some 700 studies, mainly in the field of so-called green chemistry, which aims to synthesize products such as drugs and fuels while generating less waste. So far this year, Luque has published 58 studies at a rate of one every 37 hours.
> We asked international students, who had lived at a college in London for 9 months, to sketch a south-up map of their college district, estimate travel-time to destinations within the area, and mark their everyday walking routes. We found that while estimates for sketched space were expanded with familiarity, estimates of the time to travel through the space were contracted with familiarity.
@CowperKettle That's not only hard for the scientist to do, but it is also a lot of extra work for reviewers and editors and publishers to process all that.
The dentate gyrus (DG) is part of the hippocampal formation in the temporal lobe of the brain, which also includes the hippocampus and the subiculum. The dentate gyrus is part of the hippocampal trisynaptic circuit and is thought to contribute to the formation of new episodic memories, the spontaneous exploration of novel environments and other functions.It is notable as being one of a select few brain structures which may have significant rates of adult neurogenesis in many species of mammals, from rodents to primates. Other sites of adult neurogenesis may include the subventricular zone, the...
> The dentate gyrus may also have a functional role in stress and depression. For instance, in the rat, neurogenesis has been found to increase in response to chronic treatment with antidepressants.
@M.A.R. Why do we have to be so deferential to animal's moods? Sometimes I want to take a selfie with a hippo, his mouth wide open and my head right in there. Maybe he should relax.
I strongly recommend replacing the analphabetic representations in your answer with words. Otherwise nobody knows whether the O is silent in nought dot five and one over two and such. It's something that can be very confusing 24 inners. — tchrist ♦3 mins ago
I thought the above questionnaire would be an example to @Cerberus of a presumably legitimate questionnaire, as opposed to the horoscopic 'Which countries national character am I most like?'
@user85795 Twitter polls are as unscientific as they come. They people who see the poll are 1) your followers -if- they happen to be reading twitter that day 2) possibly followers of followers 3) if the tweet gets lots of views (goes 'viral') then lots of others but the 'algorithm' is opaque, and even if not opaque, hard to figure out behavior).
And then of those who -view- the poll, who actually take it. And then of who take it, did they read it the way the tweeter expected (given the little context available to write in the tweet).
There are enough items that are well-formed and then unbiased where one could reasonably have differences such that it may have multiple agendas or, more charitably, it is trying to find out the distribution rather than force it.
But two questions are horribly intertwined: is AGI meaningful? and Should people try to create AGI?
@Cerberus I can see how one might think that, but a lot of the recent press has been hyperventilating about AI danger, and this quiz could just be tryna ng to asses that.
A good quiz (or rather mental assessment) will ask many of similar questions to check variability/inconsistency. But that can also be seen as redundancy.
@Cerberus for actual scientifically validated personality tests, you assume the person taking the quixlz isn't just doing it for laughs
@Cerberus haha no the aliens couldn't care less. They're trying to harvest the biomass in ants. So much less trouble and faster.growing
From what I hear
Uh imagine
No alien has ever told.me this
People seem afraid of terminator/Frankenstein style science fiction outcomes where an AI is someone like us but much more powerful and doesn't care about us
I am concerned about individual humans in positions of corporations implementing small slightly stupid things that dupe individuals into doing dumb things.