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00:00
@CowperKettle In the novel A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, the teenagers speak a slang called nadzat (teen in your language), and they use tolchok to mean "hit" or "blow" ...
@Robusto I read a Russian translation of that novel :)
It was very bleak.
I wonder how they handled the Nadzat.
I read it in the early 1990s, but I seem to recall that they left these terms in Latin, not translating nor transliterating them to Cyrillic.
The Russian teen slang was an act of rebellion, because the parents were, of course, accustomed to viewing Russia as a threat to the West. Not unlike today, actually.
I don't know how you'd pull that off in a Russian translation.
The author lived in Leningrad for some time, and fell in love with the Russian language.
00:11
He was a polyglot and, not surprisingly, a composer who loved Russian music among other sources.
> Lady: "Wow you must've done a lot of research"
Boyscout: "Yea it's all over the internet"
00:32
“Good creatures, do you love your lives
And have you ears for sense?
Here is a mouse like other mice,
That cost me eighteen pence.

I need but click it by my hand,
And down will come the sky,
And earth's foundations will depart
And all you folk will die.”
> "English and French use the same alphabet; it certainly explains why these two languages use the same cortical resources even though their spelling rules are very different," explains Minye Zhan. "Conversely, when writing systems differ radically in terms of contour, shape, and complexity of the signs used, specialized groups of neurons appear."
@tchrist You're making my head hurt. I have enough trouble learning music that is not for virtuosos.
Consider also the direction of writing.
I can probably fumble my way through reading six or eight languages, but I don't ever think of my brain doing different things. But they're all written in Latin letters: either Germanic for a few, or Romance for the rest.
@Robusto It's a stirring rendition, don't you think? I love the "weight" of it.
It would be a year of my life to learn to play it though, if I could, and I would be doing nothing else that year, not even working.
Yes. Very nicely done.
Yeah, the game is not worth the candle.
01:03
That.
However, listening to multiple languages at once is somehow something I stumble with. You can't, or I can't, listen to two different conversations happening simultaneously in two different languages very well at all. But I have no trouble with code-switching, so I think it's just not being able to multi-track.
I tried to learn Rachmaninoff's C#-minor Prelude a while ago. I could handle the jumps and most of the other stuff (after much practice) but I could never do some of the intricate little cascades at more than half tempo.
I wonder if that means I'm not using the same part of my brain for both of them. I think when it's the same language, you hear words from each seeping through even when following another thread.
@tchrist Japanese was like getting a brain transplant for me. It is completely unlike any Western language, and even the vocabulary explicitly borrowed from the west is a challenge even to recognize as such.
@Robusto I once had a college kid renting from me, oh more than 20 years ago now. He brought a Rocky book with him, and I was enchanted when he played things from it. But I very much made him take it away when he graduated and left. Too frustrating.
That said, there is a lot about Japanese that is pretty simple.
01:11
@CowperKettle I certainly can't imagine the point there about French and English having "different spelling rules". Remember that Chinese is not spelled (except in Pinyin).
The Chinese government would like everyone to move to Pinyin. That way they can enforce Mandarin on everyone, because it's phonetic. Chinese characters are not, and every one of the mutually unintelligible languages using them can go on pronouncing all the words differently. Pinyin makes that impossible. That's why they want it.
@tchrist I think you can understand a bit of Greek?
@Cerberus I forgot that one.
I mean, I forgot that I can read Greek.
I have to look things up, though. I just can make the sounds because the alphabet is known to me. The inflections and constructions only make sense to me when I can mentally compare them with Latin.
Some you can.
But many you cannot.
I have a friend whose Ancient Greek is much, much better than her Latin, and she feels like people try to make too much of what similarities there are.
Actually, her son is better at them both. She's more into Koine, but studied both.
And what does her son do, you ask? Why, he's a distinguished professor in theoretical physics at Cambridge, courtesy of Hawking's personal recommendation for the post.
So, not really something he needs Greek or Latin for.
At least Greek has articles. :)
I never feel like I need them in Latin.
Yes, you can use little demonstratives here and there in specific needs, but you just don't feel needy.
He went to St John's, a "great books" college. You read the great books. In the original. So all of Homer, Virgil.
That sort of thing.
> The Program involves:

Four years of literature, philosophy, and political science in seminar
Four years of mathematics
Three years of laboratory science
Four years of language (Ancient Greek, Middle/Early English, and French)
Freshman year chorus followed by sophomore year music
The Great Books are not the only texts used at St. John's. Greek and French classes make use of supplemental materials that are more like traditional textbooks. Science laboratory courses and mathematics courses use manuals prepared by faculty members that combine source materials with workbook exercises. For exa
The entire reading list is given in that article.
01:40
I smell smoke.
02:05
@tchrist Sounds good.
And long!
@tchrist Oh, dear.
Surely no forest fires?
02:21
@tchrist And maybe also because Pinyin would be easier for foreigners to learn.
Word of the morn: receiver
> In firearms terminology, the firearm frame or receiver is the part of a firearm which integrates other components by providing housing for internal action components such as the hammer, bolt or breechblock, firing pin and extractor, and has threaded interfaces for externally attaching ("receiving") components such as the barrel, stock, trigger mechanism and iron/optical sights.
Guess the word: "italian liqueur made from elderberries and flavoured with licorice and traditionally served with 3 coffee beans that represent health, wealth and fortune"
02:49
@Cerberus Yes, but not near me. One was 1,000 acres. The snow has quenched it but it stinks here still.
@CowperKettle Not anisette, which I think is French. Sambuca?
 
1 hour later…
04:02
@CowperKettle She?
> Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin admitted on April 6 that Ukrainian forces are not retreating from Donetsk Oblast's Bakhmut and said that a Russian offensive is "out of the question" at the moment.
Wagner chief is more reliable than any other Russian chief.
 
2 hours later…
05:38
@Vikas Ah, sorry! He.
@tchrist Yes, Sambuca :)
 
2 hours later…
07:11
"Famine, Affluence, and Morality" is an essay written by Peter Singer in 1971 and published in Philosophy & Public Affairs in 1972. It argues that affluent persons are morally obligated to donate far more resources to humanitarian causes than is considered normal in Western cultures. The essay was inspired by the starvation of Bangladesh Liberation War refugees, and uses their situation as an example, although Singer's argument is general in scope and not limited to the example of Bangladesh. The essay is anthologized widely as an example of Western ethical thinking. == Summary == One of the core...
08:02
@Vikas In my childhood, there was a quaint cartoon which I found amuzing
A cartoon about cows and milk.
I turned on the automatic translation of subtitles, and it's rather good. Well, relatively.
You can get the general feel of what they're singing or saying about.
09:01
@CowperKettle I will check it.
09:55
A toilet in Russia.
Twitter blocked half a dozen of anti-Ukrainian accounts on my request.
Sometimes it writes "sorry, but your indicated account stayed within the limits, etc." and sometimes it puts limitations or outright removes them.
But anyway, it's like trying to scoop out the sea with a thimble.
I'm sure they are creating thousands of them for any dozen blocked.
10:48
> Nineteenth-Century Doctors Used Milk For Blood Transfusions
O_O
11:39
> Countries with most universities:

India 🇮🇳: 5,288
USA 🇺🇸: 3,216
Indonesia 🇮🇩: 2,595
China 🇨🇳: 2,565
Brazil 🇧🇷: 1,297
Mexico 🇲🇽: 1,173
Japan 🇯🇵: 1,063
Russia 🇷🇺: 1,058
Iran 🇮🇷: 704
France 🇫🇷: 617
Germany 🇩🇪: 459
Canada 🇨🇦: 387
Poland 🇵🇱: 379
No UK?
Spain or Italy
Yes, that's odd
I'd check the source.
11:55
@CowperKettle Most of them are very poor. (India)
The college where I graduated already closed.
Also the suckers didn't refund my security fee 😂
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer, potentially bad keyword in answer, potentially bad keyword in username (90): Sarcasm without contradiction between literal and appeared meaning‭ by Spammer‭ on english.SE
13:02
> the distinction between "police" and "gangs" is pretty loose tbh, and in the same regard the distinction between "government" and "organized crime" is just that one is organized.
13:45
@CowperKettle I don't know it fully. I'm not sure about it's purpose. Basically we had to pay some extra money for college hostel along with main fee. Called as security fee. And the rule is that you get that security fee back when you leave.
My dad was at some market and struck up a conversation with a young salesman at a stall. The guy said he served a stint in Ukraine in the beginning of the war, and is not going back, no sir, no way.
He said he was a tank crew member.
@Vikas My sister was swindled of quite a lot of money in India. She got the impression that it's a time-honored tradition in India to not keep one's word in regard to workers, customers; that many people hold it as a badge of honor to swindle people.
2
An easy and simple example here is when you take some room on rent for few months, you pay extra money along with monthly rent. Called as security. We have to pay it because the owner of that property wants us to stay there for at least few fixed months. If we leave too soon, the owner doesn't go into a big loss. So he won't refund security.
She hasn't been paid a huge sum for her work as an athletic instructor.
My fellow Russian translators in chats among themselves always repeat - never work with Indian translation companies.
They are highly unreliable.
Even Russian translation agencies are more honest.
Of course, all impressions can be deceptive. There must be some good firms.
@Vikas Ah! I thought it was for "security guards" :)
A security deposit is a sum of money held in trust either as an initial part-payment in a purchasing process (often used to prevent the seller's selling an item to someone else during an agreed period of time while the buyer verifies the suitability of the item, or arranges finance), also known as an earnest payment, or else, in the course of a rental agreement to ensure the property owner against default by the tenant and for the cost of repair in relation to any damage explicitly specified in the lease and that did in fact occur. In certain taxation regimes a deposit need not be declared as a...
> The security deposits required by many residential landlords of their tenants are the source of much dispute and litigation. Many states and municipalities have enacted laws that specifically regulate the landlord's ability to withhold tenant security deposits after a tenant moves out.
Looks like it's also callsed security deposit
I've filled another copy-book full of English phrases.
Jason Campbell, an Orthodox icon painter, lives in the Yaroslavl region. Has been living there since 1993.
An American in Russia.
14:11
#Worldle #442 2/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜↗️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
⭐⭐🏙️🪙
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
He looks happy.
Pereslavl-Zalessky (Russian: Переславль-Залесский, IPA: [pʲɪrʲɪˈslavlʲ zɐˈlʲɛskʲɪj]), also known as Pereyaslavl-Zalessky, is a town in Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia, located on the main Moscow–Yaroslavl road and on the southeastern shore of Lake Pleshcheyevo at the mouth of the Trubezh River. Population: 41,925 (2010 Census); 43,379 (2002 Census); 42,331 (1989 Census). == Geography == Pereslavl-Zalessky is located in south of Yaroslavl Oblast, near a border with Moscow Oblast, 140 kilometres (87 mi) northeast of Moscow, and 139 kilometres (86 mi) southwest of Yaroslavl. == History == It was founded...
Lives in an ancient Russian town.
> It was founded in 1152 by George I of Vladimir as a projected capital of Zalesye (lit. 'beyond the woods').
> In 1708, the town became a part of Moscow Governorate.
I would drop the "a" there.
I've got the feeling that it's better without "a"
> In 1302, it became a part of the Grand Duchy of Moscow.
The same here. I would drop "a".
🌎 Apr 8, 2023 🌍
🔥 5 | Avg. Guesses: 4.75
🟨⬜🟥🟩 = 4

globle-game.com
#globle
🌎 Apr 8, 2023 🌍
🔥 5 | Avg. Guesses: 4.75
🟨⬜🟥🟩 = 4

globle-game.com
#globle
📷 #WhereTaken🇺🇸 #25 1/6
🟦🟦🟦🟦🟦🎉
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
wheretakenusa.teuteuf.fr
14:27
@CowperKettle not really. There's either countries with a high population up there, or countries that are hotspots for higher education
The exception is Iran, which due to Rafsanjani's policies two decades ago, is brimming with lower than average universities with unskilled students
Wordle 658 3/6

⬛🟨⬛🟨⬛
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
@user858770 blah blah blah
Things like this are why substantial arguments against the expanding power of the police are sidelined
@M.A.R. In Russia, some institutes were forced to close due to their poor quality.
> Olson argued that under anarchy, a "roving bandit" only has the incentive to steal and destroy, whilst a "stationary bandit"—a tyrant—has an incentive to encourage some degree of economic success as he expects to remain in power long enough to benefit from that success. A stationary bandit thereby begins to take on the governmental function of protecting citizens and their property against roving bandits. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancur_Olson
@CowperKettle it's not supercrazy. Just a bit handwaved, like most things back then
I think "outstanding universities" would be a better metric.
14:38
@CowperKettle we're in desperate need of such quality enforcement
📷 #WhereTaken🇺🇸 #25 1/6
🟦🟦🟦🟦🟦🎉

wheretakenusa.teuteuf.fr
@CowperKettle That's the only place in the US it could have been taken.
I didn't get the world "Where Taken" because they think that two countries that share a border are actually 800 km apart ...
Anyway what's with the sudden interest of the French in geography?
14:51
@Vikas P.S. Sorry for my short rant about Indian companies/agencies! I did not mean to denigrate India in any way.
What's wrong with "lame" and "dumb"? Words change meaning, and you can't stop the tide.
Nobody who can't walk is called "lame" these days. Nor is anyone who can't speak "dumb" ...
> In Agatha Christie’s novels, terms like “Oriental,” “Gypsy” and “native” have been taken out, and revised versions of Ian Fleming’s “James Bond” books will be scrubbed of racist and sexist phrases.
This is plain wrong.
2
Literary works must not be tampered with.
So let's go find what things meant in PIE and scrub the ones that meant anything disparaging.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
@M.A.R. Lamenting their former colonies, perhaps. ^_^
Would they scrub "nigger" from poems by Countee Cullen?
> Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”
> I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That’s all that I remember.
@CowperKettle They did in versions of Huckleberry Finn.
14:59
Abbreviation of the day: BIMS (burnout, inertia, meltdown, and shutdown)
> In academic settings when pressured by an adult to perform tasks that were difficult, she became unresponsive, sleepy, immobile, and limp to the touch for several minutes, and then fell asleep in a chair for as briefly as 10 min. and up to 2 hours. These “shutdown” (SD) states were always triggered by social stress of a certain kind and they became more severe and frequent over a period of about a year.
Curious. Might be some hormones (stress hormones?) acting up to make autistic persons sleepy.
@CowperKettle Sounds like narcolepsy.
Yes
Autism is such a rich collection of different syndromes.
I keep wanting to make a write up in a blog on BCKDK deficiency, a recently-discovered cause of autism
I did a Russian page in Wikipedia, but it's not being visited often.
Basically it's maple syrup disease, backwards.
Patients have a dearth of those substances which are elevated in maple syrup disease.
Branched-chain amino acids.
It's very interesting.
15:18
I like this little church in Yekaterinburg, stashed between a skyscraper and a Mining University building.
The sign on the left says "Geological Museum"
There are different stones quarried in the Urals.
The red brick building on the right has a nice coffee house, with curbside seating in the summer, which is not very good because you have to scream to get heard over the traffic noise.
@CowperKettle It may have been part of it. Again I'm not very sure. I never paid much attention to it.
15:43
A machine-learning analysis of skin fibroblast gene expression and fibroblast reactions to artificially-induced stress helps distinguish betwen patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls with an accuracy of "up to 100%". Wow. nature.com/articles/s41380-023-02034-x
Scrub off some skin into a tube, and diagnose schizophrenia using machine learning.
16:11
@CowperKettle My granddaughter is watching these cartoons now:
I guess she tired of Baby Shark and Wheels on the Bus.
16:24
Why not read to her?
Warning: Requires extreme patience.
@user223626865 She gets read to 90% of the time. Sometimes she just wants some video.
Okay, have her read to you.
She does that too. She is insanely verbal already. At 2.5 she speaks in paragraphs.
She is definitely her grandpa's progeny.
How's her writing?
Or typing.
She's not there yet.
But she is amazing nevertheless.
She remembers the words from pages in her books and recites them back when she turns the pages.
Oh, and she can count and say the alphabet.
Can you tell I'm completely smitten?
16:40
:-)
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, phone number detected in title (281): AA credit loan customer care number ✍️ 8250474308+/me just prom‭ by Gaj Kumar‭ on english.SE
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, phone number detected in title (281): AA credit loan customer care number ✍️ 8250474308+/me just prom‭ by Gaj Kumar‭ on english.SE
😲 Wow looks like a 4 alarm fire!!!!
I think someone needs to delete that user. @tchrist, @laurel?
16:55
Invite him to chat and we'll read him the riot act.
😜
Did anyone see Ai bot on Quora?
Good.
Have you?
Yes just noticed it. Sage Ai bot Beta.
AI going to infect everything. AI is new normal.
17:04
Quora and Reddit are at the bottom of my app list, so I rarely go there.
17:18
@Robusto reading Shakespeare to her will complete the progeny.
@user223626865 All in good time. I don't think she'll be ready for Shakespeare until her third birthday.
If they can sell Einstein for toddlers, why not Shakespeare for babies.
@CowperKettle False friend of the day: French: Caution, English Security deposit, bail.
 
1 hour later…
18:40
@CowperKettle preach brother
@CowperKettle we should instead say "substantia African-Americana", and Hyoscyamus african-american
@CowperKettle well I always look at my backlog and feel sleepy, and I'm not even on the spectrum
 
2 hours later…
20:52
moneymoon n Trip taken by a recently married billionaire and his trophy-wife bride. Cf. honeymoon.
2
21:03
📷 #WhereTaken🇺🇸 #25 1/6
🟦🟦🟦🟦🟦🎉
⭐⭐⭐⭐
wheretakenusa.teuteuf.fr
@Robusto UD offers another interesting meaning for such a coinage "The time after your purchase of a good or service and before 'buyer's remorse' happens."
@M.A.R. OK, that works too. Mine was original, however.
I thought of it while doing Spelling Bee, which didn't accept it.
I saw Hot Fuzz again. I'm in heaven right now
Quoting bits to myself and giggling
A near-perfect movie
Simon Pegg. Also look at Shaun of the Dead.
"He's NOT judge Judy and executioner!"
"Well he murdered Bill Shakespeare." "What? . . . Oh"
@Robusto watched only half a dozen times maybe
21:19
Ha, I'm preaching to the choir again.
But Hot Fuzz . . . I remember it was early after the operation, and I was probably still disinhibited a bit by the anesthetics, and I was giggling so much I worried I'd tear my stitches out
They seriously hurt. I eventually settled down after an hour or two of trying not to laugh
The genuine test for whether something is truly, outrageously funny: that you will literally bust a gut if you laugh at it.
That most recently happened to me with Team America
Another gut-buster.
Remember not to get high before watching such films.
I'll promise not to get disinhibited
My friend said med students are all on sertraline now
3
21:24
Carrie Fischer used to say of Albert Brooks that she was afraid to see him at parties because when she got high she was afraid he would follow her around and make her laugh till she died.
I'll probably watch Lost in America
After my Hot Fuzz fever has subsided. I'm obsessed with that movie
Yes, that was great. Also amazing is his first film, Real Life. And Defending Your Life. And Broadcast News.
21:44
@Robusto Great cartoon.
Boris Grebenshikov has a song Masha and the Bear. In the Bob Dylan style, as many of his songs.
> Маша и медведь.
Главное – это взлететь.
Пригоршня снега за ворот,
Я знаю лучший вид на этот город.
> Маша и медведь.
У нас в карманах есть медь,
Пятак на пятак и колокол льется,
Но спящий все равно не проснется.
Google Translate says "A handful of snow behind the gate" but it's not behind the gate. "За ворот" means between the neck and the collar. When you play in the snow, some might get in the crack between the collar and the neck.
It's hard yet to grasp some poetic phrases for neural nets.
@M.A.R. It's a great movie.
On par with "2001: A Space Odyssey" but without the lenghty meaningless psychedelic sequences :)
And here's he 20 years later, calling for Putin to go away. In 2019.
Back in 1999 he was already considered a living rock mastodon. Amazing that he was still composing songs 20 years later.
@CowperKettle They weren't meaningless and they weren't just psychedelic. They were a fitting visual accompaniment to the Ligeti piece that plays at that point, which is the point at which astronaut David Bowman enters the unreal dimension.
My hot take worked. I'm turning the chat into Twitter. :)
Both are featured in that sequence.
Great music.
22:02
"It's not all that clear", an anti-war song by a TV persona, who was famous for humoristic skits on the Russian TV, and now he is "An enemy of the Motherland".
After this song, it's no way for him to return to Russia.
The hero of the song wakes up to see the war starting, and first thinks of posting his opinion on Facebook, but then thinks that "it's not all that clear" (не все так однозначно). "Maybe there are some aspects I don't know, one cannot make rash judgments".
Next, the hero of the song comes home early from work, and sees his naked wife jumping in bed on his naked boss. He first thinks of pouncing at them, but then he thinks that "it's not all that clear" (не все так однозначно). Maybe they were just making Yoga, and his wife awkwardly fell on the boss's dick - "in that case, I might understand, I heard a similar thing happened once in Crimea".
Then the hero goes somewhere and drinks a whole bottle of liquor, and everything suddenly becomes clear. He posts "Putin's a dickhead" on his social net pages and goes to the boss, and kicks his ass.
The next morning, he wakes up and understands that "it's really not all that clear" (не все так однозначно), and makes an expensive present to the boss to make up with him, and stands on his knees before his wife, and apologises before her, and deletes every political comment from his social net accounts.
Because не всё так однозначно (ne vsyo tak odnoznachno)
odno - derived from odin, "one".
znachno - derived from znacheniye, "meaning"
Hence, "odnoznachno" - something that has only a single meaning.
Lyrics in Russian: lyricstranslate.com/ru/…
23:00
@CowperKettle brilliant
23:38
@M.A.R. What is that?
23:48
I asked ChatGPT if it knew how to sort in JS an array of objects by an object property. This was one of the tests I used to ask prospective front-end coders to see if they knew how to code JS. If they couldn't do it I would know they didn't have the skills we needed for that job. if i
Here's what ChatGPT returned:
let myArray = [
  { name: "John", age: 23 },
  { name: "Jane", age: 21 },
  { name: "Jim", age: 25 }
];

myArray.sort(function(a, b) {
  var nameA = a.name.toUpperCase(); // ignore upper and lowercase
  var nameB = b.name.toUpperCase(); // ignore upper and lowercase
  if (nameA < nameB) {
    return -1;
  }
  if (nameA > nameB) {
    return 1;
  }

  // names must be equal
  return 0;
});

console.log(myArray);
All quite accurate.
Another test question: What are some of the pitfalls of using for loops inside a JavaScript function. ChatGPT did well on that one too.
When using variables in a "for" loop in a function, there are several common pitfalls to be aware of:

Variable scope: Variables declared with var inside a for loop are function-scoped, not block-scoped. This means that if you declare a variable inside a for loop and then try to access it outside the loop, you may run into unexpected behavior.

Variable hoisting: If you declare a variable inside a for loop using var, the variable declaration will be hoisted to the top of the function. This means that the variable will be accessible from anywhere within the function, even outside the for loop.
Prince of Gosplan (Russian: «Принц Госплана») is a novella by Victor Pelevin, published in 1991 in Russia. == Plot == The protagonist of the novel is Sasha Lapin, a young specialist who works in the IT department of Gossnab (State Supplies). Along the way he plays one of the most popular games of the time – "Prince of Persia".; his co-workers also play computer games, such as "Abrams Battle Tank". Sasha's boss wants him to get some documents signed at Gosplan (the State Planning Committee), which involves making his way to higher levels of the video game and confronting the game's guardian figures...
A good book, I remember loving it.
@Robusto Maybe it's partly because it was in its learning corpus.
But who knows really.
If you're reading this, ChatGPT, sorry if I offended you.
@CowperKettle Too late.

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