English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

alphabet

00:41

It has been zero days since the last question by someone confused about nominative absolutes. (This seems to happen quite often on ELU, probably because it's hard to Google "weird participle thing.")

M.A.R.

There's this Persian brandy called "dog distill" made from grapes and such. Someone asked the Farsi chatGPT how to make it, and chatGPT was quite informative on how to distill a real dog

"Make sure to clean and disinfect your dog" had me giggling

Cerberus

Highly intelligent.

Robusto

01:05

@Mitch NYT Spelling Bee accepts hiragana. Who knew?

M.A.R.

AGI is here. Artificial Goddamn Idiot

CowperKettle

What is a librarian's favourite drink?
Tequila Mockingbird

M.A.R.

Nothing like starting your day with a dad joke

CowperKettle

A cat owner invited their neighbor over for dinner and introduced their four cats. "That's Alogue, Aract, Erpillar, and Astrophe," they announced. The neighbor was surprised and asked, Where on Earth did you get those names?
Oh, those are their last names, the owner said. Their first names are Cat.

Robusto

@M.A.R. Have you met him and Mitch?

They live for the dad joke.

M.A.R.

01:14

Well Mitch treats them like a renewable energy source, but Cowp usually gives us some horrifying news instead

Like some guy stabbed two dozen kittens and is now part of Wagner and sipping wine with Putin

3

Robusto

I think it's more like Chinese ~~water~~ dad-joke torture.

Example: The guy who administers the Chinese water torture is something of a drip.

CowperKettle

Studies show that atheists are more likely to own cats than Christians. Owning Christians isn't legal.

Robusto

01:34

Speech is really SBEECH!

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alphabet

@Robusto Geoff Lindsey is amazing. I just want to spend all day listening to him quietly explain phonetic factoids at me.

CowperKettle

Glass harmonica

The glass harmonica, also known as the glass armonica, glass harmonium, bowl organ, hydrocrystalophone, or simply the armonica or harmonica (derived from ἁρμονία, harmonia, the Greek word for harmony), is a type of musical instrument that uses a series of glass bowls or goblets graduated in size to produce musical tones by means of friction (instruments of this type are known as friction idiophones). It was invented in 1761 by Benjamin Franklin. == Names == The name "glass harmonica" (also "glass armonica", "glassharmonica"; harmonica de verre, harmonica de Franklin, armonica de verre, or just...

I never heard of this instrument. Ben Franklin refined it to its final form.

There was a Soviet cartoon "Glass Harmonica" made in 1968, and it was banned. I only learned of its existence today.

I learned of its existence because a month ago a US enthusiast recreated the Steamed Hams episode from the Simpsons by using the same style as in the "Glass Harmonica"

Steamed Hams but it was banned in the USSR

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CowperKettle

01:54

Word of the day: panada (A version of panada was a favorite dish of the author Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was a vegetarian.[2] It was considered a light dish suitable for invalids or women who had just given birth.[3])

alphabet

Also: the more Geoff Lindsey videos I watch, the worse I feel for ESL learners. So many rules!

CowperKettle

02:12

> 'A Communist who doesn't dream [...] is a bad Communist.' (Lenin to Valentinov, Geneva, 1904) (from a book by Victor Sebestyen)

I like this book of his, the biography of Lenin.

Victor Sebestyen

Victor Sebestyen (born 1956) is a historian of Eastern Europe, Russia, and Communism. == Career == Victor was born in Budapest. He was a child when his family left Hungary as refugees. As a journalist, he has worked for numerous British newspapers, including The London Evening Standard, T‍he Times and T‍he Daily Mail. He has contributed to many American publications, including T‍he New York Times. He reported widely from Eastern Europe when Communism collapsed and t‍he Berlin Wall came down in 1989. He covered t‍he wars in former Yugoslavia and t‍he breakup of t‍he Soviet Union. At T‍he London...

@M.A.R. LOL. Some Russian in 2022 invented an alcoholic beverage called Krotovukha, in which you put a whole mole (the animal) in a jar with alcohol and let it .. decoct? And then drink it.

Krot is the Russian word for mole

The Russian Health Ministry even issued a warning for people not to follow this recipe.

> You must drink it.

This is Pikachuvukha

Two brain networks are activated while reading, study finds - University of Texas

Mitch

02:44

@Robusto slow clap from the balcony

@M.A.R. That was good but could have been funnier if he had drowned them and what he was drinking was silovitz. slivovitz = plum brandy and siloviki = military or police cronies of Putin.

We're all working together to make the world groan

CowperKettle

Russian proverb of the day: работа не волк, в лес не убежит (work is not a wolf, and it will not escape to the woods)

работа не волк, в лес не убежит

= Русский = === Тип и синтаксические свойства сочетания === ра-бо́-та не волк, в лес не у·бе-жи́т Устойчивое сочетание (пословица). Используется в качестве самостоятельной фразы или дополнения. === Произношение === МФА: [rɐˈbotə nʲɪ‿ˈvoɫk | ˈv‿lʲes nʲɪ‿ʊbʲɪˈʐɨt] === Семантические свойства === ==== Значение ==== о необязательности срочного выполнения какой-либо работы; приглашение не спешить, обождать, задержаться ◆ — Добро́, батюшка, — тоже тихо ответил Пётр Кирилыч, .. мотнул головой и повернул к жерновам на мельницу. // — Подождал бы ты, Пётр мой Кирилыч… Работа не волк, в лес ...

HippoSawrUs

04:11

@Robusto I wanna go to sleep school. I woke up a few hours ago, dizzy, and fell and stuck the back of my head, pretty hard, on oak hardwood. I had to call for assistance. I feel better now though. I have the head of the bed up and didn't realize I hurt my back before. The point of oversharing is I just asked a question that's getting a bit of traffic. Should I comment on there that I'm unexpectedly indisposed for a couple of days? I couldn't hold a conversation 3 hrs ago.

HippoSawrUs

04:44

I buried a little remark in comments under a question; I guess that's good enough. GN.

Vikas

04:56

If Erdogan loses, will Turkey's position change about the war?

CowperKettle

05:54

I have an elevation of RBC in my urine. Never had this. I looked up the possible causes, and there are like several dozen of them. Could be just anything.

WBC = 1000 (within the limit of 2000)

RBC = 1250 (above the limit of 1000)

Casts = 0 (within the limit of 20)

A week ago I again had the attack of "something", in which 1-2 hours after a meal I felt the left part of the abdomen heavy for many hours, as if something just sat there and did not move, with some slight pain. And very sleepy and tired. I'm still feeling this after each meal, but to a lesser extent. I'm cautious not to eat too much protein-based food.

Maybe I should restart mesalamine.

Feel "tired in the brain".

Xanne

08:40

Daily Octordle #449
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Score: 61

@CowperKettle I hope you do not worry too much and feel better soon.

M.A.R.

09:24

@CowperKettle no, check with a urologist. It's hopefully nothing serious, but nothing to do with mesalamine

It would have been serious if it was an indication for mesalamine/mesalazine (one is a European name, the other American)

@CowperKettle it's probably something routine-ish. Nothing worrying.

But necessary to treat of course.

@CowperKettle haha yeah, exactly like that. The bot starts with "Ingredients: A clean and healthy dog" and it's all downhill from there.

jlliagre

10:54

Daily Octordle #449
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Score: 62

CowperKettle

@Xanne Thank you!

@M.A.R. I discovered this exactly because my endocrinologist said I needed a routine trip to the urologist, and told me to have three test results to have in hand when I arrive to the urologist, so I started doing those tests, and voila.

I went to the endocrinologist because Russia is stopping provision of diabetics with Apidra, and is transitioning them to a Russian-made insulin.

So I needed a new recipe.

I don't think that a Russian insulin is any worse though. Insulins have been quite good for the last couple decades, after Russia installed some humanized insulin facilities.

There's a cardiac clinic research center being prepared for commissioning nearby, and it took so long to build it. Every time I go past it, I think how many such centers were smashed to rubble over the past 14 month. Each one took years to build and equip.

CowperKettle

11:53

In Yekaterinburg, someone has hacked large digital advertising displays, and they are displaying anti-war propaganda e1.ru/text/gorod/2023/04/18/72230147

Matt E. Эллен

Daily Octordle #449
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Score: 58

M.A.R.

12:34

@CowperKettle the case with insulins is that one could probably argue some products are superior to others, as defined by more favorable and stable release profiles, but it's impossible to determine the clinical significance of this. So yes, Russian or Iranian insulin may be inferior (or not, depending on what the studies show, GMP and some other things) but most experts think it's quite alright to use them

If some insulin product has, say, higher rates of hypoglycemia, for example, it is clearly and clinically inferior. But if not, well, it doesn't matter much what the diagrams look like.

CowperKettle

13:01

Fifty-Six, Arkansas

Fifty-Six is an incorporated town in Stone County, Arkansas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city had a total population of 158, a decrease of 15 people from 2010. == History == When founding the community in 1918, locals submitted the name "Newcomb" for the settlement. This request was rejected, and the federal government internally named the community for its school district number (56). It has frequently been noted on lists of unusual place names. == Geography == Fifty-Six is located at 35°57′38″N 92°13′48″W. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of...

I always forget that we don't pronounce the final "is" in Arkansas

> A dispute had arisen between the state's two senators over the pronunciation issue. One favored /ˈɑːrkənsɔː/ (AR-kən-saw), the other /ɑːrˈkænzəs/ (ar-KAN-zəs).[c]

@M.A.R. Yes, maybe Western insulins are more gradual in their profile.

I recall that Glargine was considered to be very stable, it's a long-acting insulin.

I tried it out, and started gaining weight.

Mitch

@Robusto -I- didn't know. That's why I try random foreign words because you never know if it's OK for them or not.

Robusto

13:26

@Mitch Yeah. I'm starting to get bored with NYT SB anyway. I may not continue.

#Worldle #452 2/6 (100%)
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🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
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https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

jlliagre

Wordle 668 6/6

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⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
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Peut mieux faire...

M.A.R.

13:46

@CowperKettle yes, you have two types. One for basal maintenance of insulin, and one for after the meals, to mimic the physiologic spike in insulin. To be sure, Russian basal insulins are also glargine, detemir or degludec. These labels refer to the chemical changes made to the molecule to achieve the desirable release profiles. It's only that, as with any other pharmaceutical product, no two factories end up with exactly the same product in terms of quality.

So without further information on product QC, it's only speculative to say one company's product is inferior.

CowperKettle

The coronation of Charles will take a long time, because he can only move one square at a time.

Robusto

🌎 Apr 18, 2023 🌍
🔥 15 | Avg. Guesses: 4.68
🟨🟨🟥🟩 = 4

globle-game.com
#globle

Wordle 668 X/6

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Been a long time since I failed to complete one of these. What a gyp.

CowperKettle

gyp

Noun: gyp (plural gyps)

(derogatory, sometimes offensive) A cheat or swindle; a rip-off.
Why do we have to buy this new edition of the textbook when there’s almost no difference between it and the previous one? What a gyp!
Synonym of gypsy (“contra dance step”)

Verb: gyp (third-person singular simple present gyps, present participle gypping, simple past and past participle gypped)

(derogatory, sometimes offensive) To cheat or swindle.

Four etymologies.

What a gyp of a word.

> Pain or discomfort.
My back's giving me gyp.

gypsophila

Noun: gypsophila (plural gypsophilas)

Any of the many flowering plants of the genus Gypsophila, which have a profusion of small pink or white flowers.
2001, David Michener, Nan Sinton (editors), Taylor's Guide to Ground Covers, page 243,
Gypsophilas are closely related to pinks and carnations.

I thought it was some disorder, but alas, it's a flower.

In Russian it's called kachim, clearly from Turkey

Robusto

14:04

Daily Quordle 449
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m-w.com/games/quordle

@CowperKettle Cognate with kaching!, an expression from the capitalist US?

CowperKettle

dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ka-ching

I never heard of this, thank you.

Robusto

Daily Sequence Octordle #449
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Score: 64

CowperKettle

So many rare syndromes are triggered by fever, where a child develops normally, but a chance fever, even a slight one, makes him to go back in development. No wonder parents retell such stories to each other and blame vaccines, because sometimes a vaccine causes a slight fever, and voila, the genetic disorder it triggered.

Like "Fever-induced paroxysmal weakness and encephalopathy"

Robusto

@HippoSawrUs: Sorry to hear that. There are many factors that inhibit sleep. I suggest you consult your doctor and mention these problems, sooner rather than later.

@CowperKettle Careful how you use it among certain groups. It's one of those words that have been canceled because it supposedly comes from gypsy, which word has also been canceled, and so on.

jlliagre

14:21

Daily Quordle 449
8️⃣4️⃣
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m-w.com/games/quordle

Robusto

Good score.

FWIW, I grew up using that term with no etymological knowledge, nor any offense intended. It just meant cheat.

CowperKettle

@Robusto We don't have the cancel culture in Russia, this culture was canceled with start of the Special Military Operation

Robusto

@CowperKettle Yeah, when Russia cancels something (e.g., dissent) it goes down hard.

CowperKettle

Karl Radek used to joke that it's hard to polemicize with Stalin. "I'm giving him a citation, and he replies with a reference". In Russian ssylka (ссылка) means both "reference" and "internal exile" (to Siberia).

> "Со Сталиным трудно спорить: я ему цитату, а он мне — ссылку"

Karl Radek

Karl Berngardovich Radek (Russian: Карл Бернгардович Радек; 31 October 1885 – 19 May 1939) was a Russian revolutionary and a Marxist active in the Polish and German social democratic movements before World War I and a Communist International leader in the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution. == Early life == Radek was born in Lemberg, Austria-Hungary (now Lviv in Ukraine), as Karol Sobelsohn, to a Litvak (Lithuanian Jewish) family; his father, Bernhard, worked in the post office and died whilst Karl was young.: 2 He took the name Radek from a favourite character, Andrzej Radek, in Syzyfowe...

> Radek has been credited with originating a number of political jokes about Joseph Stalin.[20]: 185 He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1988, under Mikhail Gorbachev.

jlliagre

15:33

@Robusto I grew up using several French expressions using the word nègre and it took me decades to "cancel" them from my vocabulary, not to mention Agatha Christie's Les dix petits nègres.

M.A.R.

15:50

@Robusto wait, "gypsy" is cancelled? How else do you refer to them? "Travellers" does not quite convey the whole meaning?

Robusto

@jlliagre Well, yeah. I don't know how to react to all this, honestly. But I do think that they should be left alone in literature. Lit is a record of how people spoke at a given time, and if someone can't handle that, they shouldn't read that book.

@M.A.R. Yeah, I dunno. That word always had such magical connotations for me. Nothing negative, surely.

@jlliagre: Has the word Tzigane been cancelled in French?

Ravel: Tzigane ∙ hr-Sinfonieorchester ∙ Renaud Capuçon ∙ Alain Altinoglu

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And I wonder if the Brahms Zigeunerlieder have been cancelled in Germany.

Robusto

16:10

Brahms - Zigeunerlieder Op. 103 (1888)

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Mitch

@M.A.R. In English, it is now 'Roma' or 'Romani'

@jlliagre The title has been changed to 'And then there were none'

And Then There Were None

And Then There Were None is a mystery novel by the English writer Agatha Christie, described by her as the most difficult of her books to write. It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939, as Ten Little Niggers, after an 1869 minstrel song which serves as a major plot element. The US edition was released in January 1940 with the title And Then There Were None, taken from the last five words of the song. Successive American reprints and adaptations use that title, though American Pocket Books paperbacks used the title Ten Little Indians between 1964...

Click through to see the original title on the book cover.

As a kid we had the nursery rhyme '10 Little Indians' which I suppose was better than the original.

I find it really hard, despite it being a thing since I was a kid, to get rid of calling pre-columbian North Americans... Indians. A name is a name, but this one isn't even logical, but I still stumble over what they should be called. Native Americans, First Nation (that's a very normal Canadian thing to say), uh.. what do you call them (as a group)?

Robusto

16:31

@Mitch And they call themselves Indians anyway. My neighbor is from the Towa (sp?) tribe of the Jemez mountains and he uses that term without rancor or irony.

He also complains about the term "First Nations" because, he says, every tribe is now trying to say they were the actual "First" nation. So, you know, that whole competitive thing. Like football teams or what have you. We're Number One!

Lambie

I worked on a French Canadian artistic text by a member of a Canadian First Nation. He told me the following are acceptable in English for him: autochthonous people(s), indigenous people(s), Amerindians, First Nation members. That's about it for North and South America and the Caribbean.

jlliagre

16:48

@Robusto The politically correct way to call them is gens du voyage. I prefer using Tziganes, Gitans, Roms, Bohémiens or Manouches that have the advantage to better describe their cultural identities.

@Mitch In 1940 in the US but the French version of the book kept its original title until 2020 when it was renamed Ils étaient dix and that was highly polemical.

@Mitch When I was a kid, we called them Indiens and generally still do, and people from India were often called Hindous to make a difference, despite not all of them followed Hinduism. We sometimes also used Indiens d'Amérique and more recently Amérindiens.

2

jlliagre

17:22

@Robusto Premières nations is used by Québecois and other French speaking Canadians but the term is mostly unknown in France.

Mitch

17:33

@jlliagre For people from actual India, I call them 'South Asian' which I think is also the British term?

@jlliagre Everybody is unhappy

@Lambie autochthonous is good, but kind of a mouthful and one you wouldn't expect most to be able to parse. What do they think of 'aboriginal'?

Oh... indigenous sounds OK to my ears 'already born here'

@Robusto It may be OK with ... indigenous NA population, but how does that make South Asians feel?

Robusto

17:49

@Mitch That is funny because "Indian" and "India" are used widely by all the Indians I've ever worked with or been related to. And it's just a foreign term they use with foreigners. But maybe Vikas can shed more light here.

tchrist

18:18

Like just fricking stop all this insanely nazi-level policing of other people's language! Who do you think you are, Putin? STFU already, Lord have mercy.

Trying to control other people's speech is evil.

4

Just mind your own business, damn it.

Mitch

18:37

@Robusto I meant when South Asians hear indigenous North Americans referred to as 'Indians'. How do South Asians feel about that?

In English of course.

I mean I don't think the English particularly care that the Irish call the English Saxons. But the politics are different.

Cerberus

19:24

@CowperKettle Hah!

Lambie

@Robusto Of course, people from India are Indians. That's another thing.

@jlliagre We are discussing English and not French.

@Mitch Yes, aboriginal is good but is a much wider reference.

Cerberus

In Dutch, an Indiaan is from the New World. If you're from India, I guess you're an Indiër. Though the word Indië "India" has always been used to describe large parts of the world, so it's never unambiguous.

At least the adjective, Indiaas, is unambiguously about the country of India.

user 85795

19:55

I think we need the context of Columbus thinking he landed in the country of India here, no?

jlliagre

20:56

@user85795 That's not breaking news ;-)

Robusto

@Mitch They know it's an overloaded name. Hell, half of them are software engineers, so they understand such overloading. It collides in their mental namespace but they can quickly call up an algorithm to deal with it. ^_^

tchrist

@user85795 No, that's the etymological fallacy.

All that matters is what the speaker means. It doesn't matter what the word's origin meant to somebody long dead, let alone what it means to some antipodal penguin half a world away. Plus the penguin isn't the one doing the talking. There is no universal truth in polysemy.

Your job is to understand the speaker, not to attack him for his choice of words that are in violation of the South Pole Treaty.

Nobody in Peoria gives a rat's ass, nor should they, about whatever the penguins are squawking about.

Let Timbuktu keep to its own. It has no say over what things mean in Peoria. It needs to STFU.

jlliagre

21:20

9

Q: Where did the phrase "I don't give a rat's ass" come from?

I would love to know the origin of this saying.

tchrist

@jlliagre It's a form a squatitive negation, about which we still don't know diddly.

Perhaps the other end of bidding someone take a long walk off a short pier.

jlliagre

Robusto

AMERICAN MADNESS

> Thousands of people with severe mental illness have been failed by a dysfunctional system. My friend Michael was one of them. Twenty-five years ago, he killed the person he loved most.

tchrist

21:36

$fox -= $787_500_000.00;

jlliagre

21:50

@tchrist Unusual thousand separator, but good breaking news anyway.

Robusto

23:39

@tchrist That was anticlimactic. I was looking for a good scrap, with Fox going ass-first through the jaws of Dominion's Tarrasque.

Also ... only a nine-figure settlement? I'm sure the Fox ghouls are congratulating themselves on all the money they saved.

tchrist

@Robusto Clearly they decided that losing $⅞B was a better deal than they risked otherwise.

Robusto

But still an anticlimax for us.

tchrist

I suspect that the late-night comedians will also be internally disappointed. But that externally they'll still try to find a way to make fun of it.

Robusto

@tchrist Especially if there were punitive damages tacked on after the $1.6 billion.

I really wanted to see the lying liars try to lie their lying way out of this one.

tchrist

@Robusto Perjury is a felony in most states.

Robusto

23:54

Now it's sort of swept under the rug, and Fox's propagandists vow to continue their practice of delivering the fair and balanced news ...

But there's still some game left:

> The end of the dispute with Dominion doesn’t end Fox’s legal troubles stemming from the 2020 election. It still faces a second defamation suit from another voting-tech company, Smartmatic, which is seeking $2.7 billion in damages. Settling the Dominion case could raise the possibility of a settlement with Smartmatic, which has made claims similar to Dominion’s.

> “We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false,” the cable network said in a statement following the news that it would no longer contest Dominion’s allegations in court. “This settlement reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards. We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues.”

@tchrist ^

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