English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2023-05-03

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Cerberus

00:00

But that is exactly my point, or one of my points: just as with Alpha Fold in the quotation, we will not understand at all how this future computer intelligence is structured, how it works.

But I think there is some underlying assumption with some people that a true intelligence must be human-like.

I do not think that is right.

How do you feel about a behavioural definition of intelligence, rather than a structural one?

@Vikas So he is hurring quite a few 'successes' in an attempt to prevent his impending loss in this month's great elections...

Robusto

What we perceive as random may be merely beyond our comprehension.

@Cerberus Wouldn't that be interpreting the effect as the cause? Or perhaps denying a cause altogether?

Cerberus

Denying a cause, sure, for why would there be any cause?

Robusto

00:16

If there is no cause, how is there any effect?

Cerberus

There is no cause in the sense that a machine is just chugging along, displaying whatever behaviour its totality happens to display.

A brain is a machine, which can be judged by its behaviour, its structure ignored by examinators.

In deciding how intelligent a person is, we study his behaviour, not scans of his brain. Behaviour is enough.

@Robusto That is always the case. If we could fully comprehend the universe in all its details, we could predict every 'random' event.

Robusto

That will always be beyond our ken, I'm pretty sure.

Cerberus

00:43

Yes, but the point stands.

M.A.R.

01:09

Nothing is beyond Ryan Gosling

alphabet

01:20

@Mitch Atmospheric noise is a great source of randomness for cryptography. An EEG might also work, but I'm not sure why you would hook a bunch of mentally ill people up to EEG machines when you can use an antenna.

@M.A.R. The next time someone with paranoid schizophrenia tells you "They're trying to hook my brain up to a computer to generate secret codes," take them seriously.

tchrist

01:35

@M.A.R. Then why isn't there a pregnant Barbie?

Robusto

@Cerberus Still, something caused the machine to chug. To say that we don't care about causes doesn't mean they don't exist.

2 hours later…

alphabet

03:27

@Cerberus Don't we study a person's behavior because it's a proxy for how their brain works? Goodhart's Law strikes again--when you use behavior to judge intelligence, people will optimize for making machines that seem intelligent, regardless of whether they in fact are.

Cerberus

04:07

@alphabet But that is something different.

What I mean is that we study someone's behaviour, not brain scans or neural networks, when we want to decide whether or not someone is intelligent.

No matter what his brain is like: if his behaviour is not intelligent, we don't consider him intelligent.

So: we do not need to study his brain, in order to judge his intelligence.

Just as we don't need to use the number of rings in a tree in order to determine its thickness (even if that were a reliable indicator).

CowperKettle

04:38

@M.A.R. I think it's a heap of different disorders/syndromes

> "And the moral is this: Be it madam or miss
To whom you have something to say,
You are only absurd when you get in the curd
But you’re rude when you get in the whey"

Imitating Human Behaviour with Diffusion Models

CowperKettle

05:22

My cousin-once-removed told me a story of how his friend went through the whole court system of Kyrgyzstan, bottom to top, appeal after appeal, just to get an inheritance (an apartment and some stuff) that was 100% his, after his dad died there.

The dead man's former wife went to court, claiming 50% of the inheritance, although under law she had the right to 0%.

The son, living in Russia, was unwilling to actually appear in court. To spend the time and money, leaving his work etc.

So he told his lawyere there to appear instead of him.

The wife gave a bribe to the judge, and won.

The son appealed, and this time went to the country.

The appeal court's judge fully agreed with the son's arguments, said "yes, you are entitled to all the inheritance". Then he went into his .. "jury room" (?) to take a decision.

The lawyer was nudging the son to give at least $200 as a bribe at that moment, but the son said "did you hear? The judge fully agreed with me"

The judge reappeared in the court room, and ruled.. in favor of the woman, who bribed him too.

So finally the son relented, went to a higher court of appeal and gave the judge there $300, and won.

Although all the laws there on his side from the start.

Another of his friends in Tajikistan got a fine, and went to the official to appeal the fine. The official said to him "Hey, I paid $10 000 in bribes to be appointed to this post. Without fining somebody, how would I recoup my investment?"

CowperKettle

05:55

> Despite the narrow audience, scientific publishing is a remarkably big business. With total global revenues of more than £19bn, it weighs in somewhere between the recording and the film industries in size, but it is far more profitable. In 2010, Elsevier’s scientific publishing arm reported profits of £724m on just over £2bn in revenue. It was a 36% margin – higher than Apple, Google, or Amazon posted that year.

theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/…

1 hour later…

Xanne

07:23

Wordle 683 5/6

⬜⬜🟨⬜🟩
⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

1 hour later…

SmokeDetector

08:26

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer, potentially bad ns for domain in answer (63): HOW DID THE ADVERBIAL USE OF "SMACK" COME INTO USE‭ by Ella Elise‭ on english.SE

Vikas

09:11

So far weather here is going good. Even in May.

Not hating summer.

Weather is definitely confused this year.

2 hours later…

CowperKettle

10:56

@Vikas Here, the weather is uncharacteristically hot. gismeteo.ru/weather-yekaterinburg-4517/2-weeks

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I recall heavy snowfalls on May 1st on some years. And here we're having + 27°C on the 3rd of May.

Back in 2015, we did not have +27C through the summer.

"This day is the hottest 3rd of May on record in Yekaterinburg, hotter than the previous record holder, 3rd of May 1927" e1.ru/text/spring/2023/05/03/72272171

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer (62): Exact meaning of "as we choose"‭ by Abdurazaq Ahmid‭ on english.SE

CowperKettle

11:25

> In one of the last reported instances of a wife sale in England, a woman giving evidence in a Leeds police court in 1913 claimed that she had been sold to one of her husband's workmates for £1.

O_O

Vikas

12:04

@CowperKettle Seems sudden and big change.

CowperKettle

The Seventh Letter of Plato is an epistle that tradition has ascribed to Plato. It is by far the longest of the epistles of Plato and gives an autobiographical account of his activities in Sicily as part of the intrigues between Dion and Dionysius of Syracuse for the tyranny of Syracuse. It also contains an extended philosophical interlude concerning the possibility of writing true philosophical works and the theory of forms. Assuming that the letter is authentic, it was written after Dion was assassinated by Calippus in 353 BC and before the latter was in turn overthrown a year later. ��2...

I never knew that Plato was so involved in politics and left some personal accounts.

I only knew that he was a philosopher.

Turns out that "Plato" (Platon) is a nickname, given to him by his wrestling coach, because he was wide (wide-shouldered?)

SmokeDetector

12:25

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at beginning of answer (36): Does "keep one's cool" come from Beat slang? ✏️‭ by Tim Barnsley‭ on english.SE

Robusto

12:55

#Worldle #467 2/6 (100%)
🟩⬜⬜⬜⬜⬅️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
⭐⭐🏙️🪙
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

🌎 May 3, 2023 🌍
🔥 3 | Avg. Guesses: 4.63
🟨🟩 = 2

globle-game.com
#globle

Lucky guess.

Wordle 683 4/6

⬛🟨⬛🟨⬛
⬛⬛🟨🟨⬛
🟨🟨⬛🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Robusto

13:15

Daily Quordle 464
6️⃣8️⃣
4️⃣5️⃣
m-w.com/games/quordle

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle psychoses are, but you could argue schizophrenia is one illness with varying severity. Well, that's probably not how it's interpreted currently clinically, but the idea is if we know more about it, we're gonna narrow the scope of schizophrenia, and add some more types of psychosis

Robusto

Never mind about the Octordle. Too slow for that today.

M.A.R.

Or not. We'll see

@CowperKettle yeah they're monsters

Robusto

@M.A.R. Differences in degree may sometimes manifest as differences in kind. Look at the insect lifecycle, for example: egg, pupa, larva, adult.

M.A.R.

Sure. It could all be semantics

Maybe we'll find out, oh, there's this elusive neurotransmitter that we never knew about, and it plays some subtle roles in this and that disorder.

It's not very unlikely, because peptide neurotransmitters are very difficult to analyze, compared to small molecules like serotonin and dopamine

CowperKettle

13:26

There's a new drug in development for schizophrenia, which acts on TAAR1

If it flies, it will be something big.

M.A.R.

There was this estimate that we know about maybe only 10 percent of our hormones.

CowperKettle

The first antipsychotic not acting upon the D2 receptors.

Ulotaront (INN; developmental codes SEP-363856, SEP-856) is an investigational antipsychotic that is undergoing clinical trials for the treatment of schizophrenia and Parkinson's disease psychosis. The medication was discovered in collaboration between PsychoGenics Inc. and Sunovion Pharmaceuticals using PsychoGenics' behavior and AI-based phenotypic drug discovery platform, SmartCube. Ulotaront is in Phase III of clinical development. Research has shown that ulotaront results in a greater reduction from baseline in the PANSS total score than placebo. Treatment with ulotaront, as compared with...

Already in phase III.

And there's KarXT and some other drug

KarXT has met its endpoint: bioworld.com/articles/…

Xanomeline (LY-246,708; Lumeron, Memcor) is a small molecule muscarinic acetylcholine receptor agonist that was first synthesized in a collaboration between Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk as an investigational therapeutic being studied for the treatment of central nervous system disorders.Its pharmacological action is mediated primarily through stimulation of central nervous system muscarinic M1 and M4 receptor subtypes. Xanomeline is currently being developed as a combination drug (Kar-XT; xanomeline + trospium) by Karuna Therapeutics. Trospium is a non-CNS penetrant non-selective muscarinic antagonist...

Xanomeline + Trospium = KarXT

M.A.R.

There's a lot of room for improvement in antipsychotic drugs, and a lot of them will probably be found to have surprising effects, leading to development of even newer drugs for other psychiatric and non-psychiatric conditions.

A lot of drug discovery works like that. They made sulfonamide antibiotics and then realized they could lower blood glucose, so they made sulfonylureas for diabetes.

CowperKettle

I listened to an audiobook with a chapter about sulfonamide

The author described how it turned patients' skin some exotic color

M.A.R.

In fact, antipsychotic drugs were first developed because they discovered that promethazine, an antihistamine given before surgeries to prevent shock, also helps reduce the preoperative anxiety in patients a bit.

It led to the development of chlorpromazine, which is used even today

CowperKettle

13:35

> In 1951, Laborit and Huguenard administered the aliphatic phenothiazine, chlorpromazine, to patients for its potential anesthetic effects during surgery. Shortly thereafter, Hamon et al. and Delay et al. extended the use of this treatment in psychiatric patients and serendipitously uncovered its antipsychotic activity.

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle sulfonamide is a functional group with a nitrogen atom, a sulfur atom and two oxygen atoms. It's very commonly used when you want a polar group with hydrogen bonds in your drug, so many drugs have sulfonamide groups.

But there's also sulfa allergy, which is sometimes very serious.

Furosemide, a diuretic, amprenavir, an antiviral HIV drug, and sulfamethoxazole, an antibiotic, all have sulfonamide groups.

CowperKettle

> Reserpine was isolated in 1952 from the dried root of Rauvolfia serpentina (Indian snakeroot),[31] which had been known as Sarpagandha and had been used for centuries in India for the treatment of insanity, as well as fever and snakebites

This chemical decreases monoamine neurotransmitters across the board

No wonder it was tried out for insanity by Indians.

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle I've heard Hemingway committed suicide because he was taking reserpine.

CowperKettle

O_O

M.A.R.

Reserpine can cause depression.

CowperKettle

13:40

Yes

He should have stayed away from psychiatrists.

Kurt Vonnegut was prescribed Ritalin, and felt horrible on it.

> I talked to a doctor about it and she prescribed Ritalin. It worked. It really impressed me. I wasn’t taking a whole lot of it, but it puzzled me so much that I could be depressed and just by taking this damn little thing about the size of a pinhead, I would feel much better.

Hm. No.

I misremembered probably.

A serial killer, Tony Costa, invited Vonnegut's daughter to ‘Come and see my marijuana patch.’ She declined. He killed a couple of young women there. mentalfloss.com/article/649595/kurt-vonnegut-cape-cod-cannibal

Antone Charles "Tony" Costa (August 2, 1944 – May 12, 1974), was an American serial killer who achieved notoriety for committing serial murders in and around the town of Truro, Massachusetts, in 1969. == Early life and crimes == Antone Charles Costa was born on August 2, 1944, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He committed his first violent offense in November 1961, at age 17, when he broke into a house and attacked an occupant, a teenaged girl. Charged with burglary and assault, Costa was sentenced to three years' probation and a one-year suspended sentence.In 1966, Costa picked up two hitchhikers...

> Vonnegut maintained a correspondence with Costa. The author said, "The message of his letters to me was that a person as intent on being virtuous as he could not possibly have hurt a fly. He believed it."

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I was perusing the literature, and found one curious case report, and wrote this guy. He replied that he will check the gene. I had thought they read absolutely all literature regularly.

They are working on finding out genes linked to cerebral folate deficiency.

They found out two thus far, CIC and KDM6B

I don't think this one, PGAP2, will be as directly linked to CFD as these two.

Mutations of PGAP2 might slightly wreck the passage of a host of different molecules throught the brain-cerebrospinal fluid barrier, regardless of their nature.

But only slightly.

Otherwise the patients would die in infancy

M.A.R.

14:11

@tchrist responsible population control strategies.

tchrist

@M.A.R. No, because Ken came in a different box.

M.A.R.

Ha, I'd continue this convo but I'm not as immune as you are to flags

CowperKettle

Study shows that thinking hard about complex problems results in distinct facial muscle movement patterns

That's why I have a smooth face.

Curious. In Russian, the word skarb means diverse household stuff. Household effects. Clothes, tools. In Ukrainian, it means treasure, from Polish skarb = treasure. skarb państwa ― state treasury (Polish)

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I came across this skarb usage on Twitter, so added it to my Anki.

He says "What do you see? This is treasure". (in a jocular manner)

tchrist

14:27

Don't scarf the scarab.

CowperKettle

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Google-Imaging for skarb in Russian brings up this.

Hardly a treasure

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In Polish, it brings up diverse sayings like "Where your treasure lies, there is your heart"

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Moj skarb = my treasure

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> My family is my treasure, so I buried them in the forest.

Some meme, probably.

M.A.R.

14:52

@CowperKettle oh, he probably used it for his high blood pressure

Mitch

15:32

@M.A.R. I follow all of that except for the 'Random? Certainly not, because you can affect it.' You can do all sorts of things to a random measure and the result is still random. You can shift it, change its standard deviation, etc etc. A collection of results that is random can be manipulated deterministically and still be random. Unless I've misunderstood the direftion you're getting at.

M.A.R.

@Mitch Noise generated while the instrument is doing its thing can only be shifted etc. and it's probably random. Noise from brain waves changes if you administer a drug

CowperKettle

> A neutron was recently arrested for robbery...
...but it wasn't charged.

M.A.R.

So there are some general patterns, and it can't be any number in a certain range at a certain time. It's very likely not random then, just impossible to decipher

Mitch

@Cerberus That is plausible, that we don't understand intelligence enough to recognize it when we see it, either because we don't understand -human- intelligence enough -or- (what you're saying) that maybe there are other forms of intelligence, kinds that humans don't have, that we don't know how to describe.

I have heard that latter kind of statement from animal behaviorists how talk about dolphin intelligence or insect intelligence or crow intelligence, that when we devise experiments to test these non-humans we may be missing things that they can do because we are too biased by comparison with our own kinds of intelligence -or- biased by the way our human intelligence can organize their behavior.

(they say these kinds of things because they get results that show that the animals don't do very well on the experiments they've set up but by being around the animals they (the scientists) have an intuition that the animals have abilities that could be called 'intelligent' but the experiments they can imagine don't measure that yet.

CowperKettle

Whoever put the “S” in fastfood is a marketing genius.

Mitch

15:45

So yes, one could say similar things about machines (designed by humans in order to do very specific things). The machine may have some features put in there by the human designer but it also may have other unexpected features that are exposed through use.

@Cerberus 'everyone knows'... I don't think that is the case.

@Cerberus It is very very hard to understand 'intelligence'. Just trying to understand our own is hard enough.

@Cerberus The usual dichotomy is extrinsic vs intrinsic: things you can see from the outside (behavior, functionality, what it can do) vs things you can see in the construction (how it was built/designed, how it works). I think the latter is what you mean by 'structural'.

Behaviorism/functionalism/instrumentalism/physicalism (there are slight differences among those) philosophically work mostly on just extrinsic things. They may be inspired by our introspections or imaginations, but what we can know is only by external data.

Behaviorism as a psychological fell out of favor 70 years ago because it was too extreme almost denying thought altogether (which is, despite thought being inaccessible to others, kind of ludicrous.

But behavior as a definition of intelligence is scientifically more supportable (like we can do intelligence experiments with babies even though they can't talk but there are other things we can measure like heart rate, time spent looking at something, or rate of sucking).

I've probably spoken like this, that some new AI technique is claimed as being great and then I'll say it's not so great because 'look how it is built, that's not intelligent'.

eg chess programs, they're 'just' using a tree search, that's not 'intelligence'.

But one could counter that that doesn't matter, people can't beat the chess programs.

Or another example, since about 1890, cars have been faster than horses. Who cares that cars use metal and mini gas explosions (or an electric motor) instead of muscle and bone? Cars are faster, why would you care how it did it?

As to 'faster', totally, cars are better.

But for the term 'intelligence' people tend to use that word badly. "Deep blue is so intelligent it can beat grand masters at chess. How about checkers, a much simpler game? Oh. No, we'd have to reprogram it."

"Hey we have an AI program that predicts recidivism with 95% accuracy. How does it do it? Oh it's actually just checks their race and zip code and if it is over a threshold .."

CowperKettle

16:17

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Mitch

Most of the things that are called intelligent just don't generalize, or when they call them 'intelligent' they're using the human idea and they just aren't that. Using the term 'intelligent' is just misleading. Just say 'beats everyone at chess' or 'can determine billions of digits of pi' or 'can predict the winner of the March Madness'.

CowperKettle

The Darvaza gas crater, burning since 1971.

Mitch

Calling it 'intelligence' leads people to believe it can baby sit your kids.

CowperKettle

16:44

Etymology of the day: quick - from Old English cwic - alive

> Man is no star, but a quick coal
Of mortal fire.
(1633)

In pregnancy terms, quickening is the moment in pregnancy when the pregnant woman starts to feel the fetus's movement in the uterus. == Medical facts == The first natural sensation of quickening may feel like a light tapping or fluttering. These sensations eventually become stronger and more regular as the pregnancy progresses. Sometimes, the first movements are mis-attributed to gas or hunger pangs.A woman's uterine muscles, rather than her abdominal muscles, are first to sense fetal motion. Therefore, her body weight usually does not have a substantial effect on when movements are initi...

> Gai Gutherz et al, Translating Akkadian to English with neural machine translation, PNAS Nexus (2023). DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad096

Neural net for cuineiform translation

Mitch

17:00

@CowperKettle The Kickening

2 hours later…

Robusto

18:37

@Mitch Also, in pregnancy, The Sickening.

Cerberus

> „De Europese defensie-industrie moet overschakelen op de stand ‘oorlogseconomie’”, zei de Franse Eurocommissaris Thierry Breton. Het plan, de Act in Support of Ammunition Production (ASAP), dat hij deze woensdag presenteerde, moet nog goedgekeurd worden door parlement en lidstaten.

Very droll.

> Commissaris Breton heeft in de afgelopen weken de Europese munitie-industrie in kaart gebracht. Elf EU-lidstaten produceren granaten. Na het einde van de Koude Oorlog zijn de fabrieken weliswaar fors afgeslankt, maar de structuur is in essentie nog aanwezig. De industriële basis is volgens Breton zelfs breder dan in de VS.

Breton suggests the E. U. should be able to produce more ammunition than America in the middling term.

Robusto

19:37

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Cerberus

A bit theatrical, isn't it?

Robusto

Sometimes a bit of theater helps persuade people. Look at Putin's "Ukraine drone assault on the Kremlin" that he obviously stage-managed.

Cerberus

I'm not sure what happened there.

Haven't read a real analysis yet.

Robusto

It smacks of theater to me.

Cerberus

It may be.

Or it may be the Russian resistance.

Robusto

19:51

A false-flag operation if ever I saw one.

Cerberus

Or some Ukrainian independent group.

It is possible.

Robusto

@Cerberus That would be a welcome sight, but I doubt there is such a resistance that can muster actual attacks on the Kremlin.

Cerberus

Drones are the easiest way.

Robusto

First you would have to get drones, ones that could do actual damage. That implies an arms-importing/-trading operation.

Cerberus

You can use any kind of explosive and tie it to the drone, so to speak.

Even regular fireworks can be used to create a potent bomb.

Robusto

19:55

Not one that could precisely penetrate Kremlin defenses and do real damage, I should think.

Cerberus

I don't know how well its defences can stop a small, low-flying drone.

But I think the drone(s) was/were shot down 3 km from the Kremlin?

Robusto

Three km? Wow, how would they even know it was headed for the Kremlin?

The more I hear, the more it sounds like a fabrication.

Cerberus

Could be speculation.

Robusto

And like the Russians would ever tell the truth about anything unless it suited their purposes.

Cerberus

There could be a link between these drones and the Russians hearing of this leaked American document, about how Ukraine wanted to attack Moscow in some way.

Yeah, they wouldn't.

M.A.R.

20:00

@Robusto he watched a Bollywood movie before doing that

Robusto

@M.A.R. That's the only reason he kept his underwear on.

M.A.R.

Besides, persuade people to do what? Go donate to the nearest homeless shelter?

Robusto

He's an elected official. He's hoping to shame the legislature, I presume.

M.A.R.

Again, to push for what? They can't make it rain gold

And if they're corrupt, how likely are they to say, "sorry, here's the cartel money, every dollar"

Robusto

It's a symbolic act. Nobody expects it to do anything but get news coverage calling people to witness the plight of the poor.

M.A.R.

20:04

Or just news coverage for him

Robusto

You're too young to have witnessed the Buddhist monk in Saigon dousing himself with gasoline and setting himself on fire. You could as easily ask why he did that, but it's harder to ask whether his motives were sincere.

M.A.R.

Every once in a while some religious bozo here does or says something similar, though not in Majles, so I'm cynical

Robusto

Thích Quảng Đức And The True Story Of The Burning Monk Photograph

> "No news picture in history,” John F. Kennedy once said, “has generated so much emotion around the world as that one.”

M.A.R.

@Robusto well, that guy died. It's different.

Robusto

BTW, it was in Hue, not Saigon. My error.

Cerberus

20:07

The Arabic revolutions of ca. 2011 also began with a man burning himself.

M.A.R.

If you hear Raisi's intellectually lacking speeches, he's the one who's the most on fire (no pun) about poor people. They talk about it more than they talk about "CIA spies protesting in the streets" actually. Every second moron is Majles is the same: distances themselves from the mic, and screams at the top of their lungs.

Though of course their solution is something like executing people they don't like, so the society would be purified or something.

No concrete solutions, just posing, not even for the camera, just so they feel good about themselves.

This feels like that, which is why I'm cynical. Are there really going to be any repercussions? Any follow-up? I'll believe it when I hear it.

SmokeDetector

20:23

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword with email in body, potentially bad keyword in body (56): My testimony on how I win my husband back‭ by Stella Michael‭ on english.SE

Robusto

20:57

@M.A.R. I think the difference is that the Mexican thing is from the bottom up—not the top down, as yours in Iran would seem to be.

1 hour later…

Mitch

22:14

@Robusto The Take-a-nap-now-because-you-won't-be-able-to-for-another-twenty-years... ing.

Michael Rybkin

23:05

Check this for me please:

Everything else looks just like it has before. It's perfectly fine. Really, no problems.

Cerberus

@MichaelRybkin I'm not sure whether has is correct, but I'd use did.

Probably because of before.

Robusto

23:36

@Mitch Yes, I remember that one. When we got our first son home we were like, what, do we just hold him in our arms for the next 18 years?

@Cerberus Sounds better that way, definitely.

Cerberus

@Robusto I remember reading about the explosions being 3 km from the Kremlin, but Anglo-Saxon media suggest they were right above the Kremlin.

I wonder how one can tell at all whether the explosions are close or distance, from a bidimensional video.

Michael Rybkin

@Cerberus Take a listen to this please: youtube.com/watch?v=xrKbOF3vHo8#t=9m3s

Robusto

@Cerberus You can't. And I don't think there's anything about that story that is worth a nickel's worth of attention. We cannot know what the facts are, ever, because the Russian government is simply untrustworthy.

Cerberus

@Robusto Sure, we will not get any facts from the Russian government.

I'm just wondering whether 'our' media say it was actually over the Kremlin or not.

Robusto

@MichaelRybkin This is how native speakers talk naturally in English. They're not planning a prepared statement, they're just winging it.

Cerberus

23:51

I hope Muscovites will come up with more observations about the paths the drones took.

@MichaelRybkin It does sound like has.

Maybe two days, but most probably not.

Robusto

It is has. That's how people talk in English. They don't fret how to say something exactly right, they just speak the words that come, and if they make a mistake they'll correct, but it would have to be an obvious mistake that altered meaning.

Cerberus

I would say has is just a bit unusual, because the present perfect is normally used to describe a past situation that has continued until now or just before now, which is not the case there.

But it doesn't sound super wrong to me.

Robusto

It's not. Which is why he didn't correct anything.

> The poem of the mind in the act of finding what will suffice.

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Are they serious? A Nazi study carrel?

I wonder whose idea that was.

Probably he did not notice the Gestalt.

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May '233

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…

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