English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

CowperKettle

00:57

I'd like to make myself clear: if I could choose one superpower, it would be invisibility.

Robusto

That's creepy. I'd choose flight.

CowperKettle

Several days ago I had a dream in which I could fly. I was in Moscow, and there was some kind of civil war going on, with huge electronic machines on top of high buildings. The machines were blocking drones from flying.

Today, I had a dream in which I enrolled as a sailor on a catamaran to sail from the UK to New Zealand, in a crew of about four or five. In the dream, I had an experience of making a similar trip once.

So I went collecting my things needed for the trip.

I bought a new package of B6+Mg+B2, so I can recall (some of) my dreams again.

Russia's oil and gas revenues have increased so much that it can finish the year 2023 on-target in terms of state budget. t.me/agentstvonews/4088

In July and August, the revenues were 10% above the plan.

Finance Minister Siluanov said that state spending may still have be cut by 10%, but not this year, thanks to high revenues. Probably next year.

One woman from our apartment block, a construction specialist, has enrolled to construct new homes in Mariupol, and is now working there.

A very good salary, and she has been posting photos of her on the beach too.

alphabet

02:04

24

Q: Sunsetting Winter/Summer Bash: Rationale and Next Steps

This year, we made the difficult decision to sunset Winter/Summer Bash. Winter Bash has been an annual event on Stack Exchange each December for the past decade. What are the origin and goals of Winter Bash? Winter Bash, in its original conception, was an event that was there for fun at the end o...

I believe that this post is a way of saying "we're running out of money and people, apparently selling a tech company to a private equity firm does not, in fact, increase profits"

Laurel

@alphabet Were you even here for the last one?

alphabet

@Laurel No. I have no opinions on this decision.

But I am concerned by this line:

> This year we have an even smaller number of staff members on Product, Engineering, and Community

Laurel

@alphabet noob :p

alphabet

That is...a very bad sign.

You don't downsize when things are going well, not to the point that you cancel events solely because of it.

Laurel

@alphabet Pretty sure that's this:

-52

Q: 2023 Layoff impacting 58 SO/SE staff (2023-05-10)

A few minutes ago, CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar posted a note to our blog to share the news that Stack Overflow has made the difficult decision to reduce our workforce by 58 people, or about 10% of our total staff. Impacted employees have now been notified, and have had a chance to speak with our P...

discussion stack-exchange announcements stack-exchange-team company

alphabet

02:14

@Laurel Ah.

Laurel

This was less than a month before their orders to essentially stop moderating AI content, which at the end of May for mods and the beginning of June for the public release

Also, as the comments on that question say, those layoff happened after 10% of their workforce was dedicated to doing stuff with AI

Stuff like the formatter, which had a great several days playing D&D with me, among other things

-206

Q: We are seeking functional feedback for the formatting assistant

We are seeking functional feedback for the formatting assistant experiment, which will help users format their question body and code according to the language they are using. The experiment is now open and people will be interacting with the tool. If you encounter any issues with the tool we hop...

discussion asking-questions formatting-assistant

Cerberus

03:16

Just tested this.

Note that the image is a screenshot of text from SE which has nothing to do with baking or food.

Laurel

@Cerberus I had a similar conversation with Bard back when I heard Bard can process images (it will not do it right if you paste in a URL :p)

Cerberus

Ah, then how will it do that right?

I've never used Bard.

Laurel

This is the way you're supposed to do it:

There's a button to upload an image that you need to use.

In this case the output was actually really accurate. It's a picture of one of the ceiling lizards I saw on vacation

Cerberus

03:40

That's pretty nice!

So the image in the URL example was something completely different from what Google thought?

CowperKettle

03:51

Journalist sentenced to 5.5 years of jail for covering the instance when a group of OMON policemen refused to go to Ukraine.

bbc.com/russian/articles/c895lddr553o

CowperKettle

04:53

Legendary Pakistani Singer goes Metal [Sanson Ki Mala Pe]

►

Sanson Ki Mala Pe

"Sanson Ki Mala Pe" (Hindi: साँसों की माला पे; "on the rosary of breaths") is a qawwali song based on the ghazal named "sāñsoñ kī maalā par simroñ nisdin pī kā naam", which was penned by Tufail Hoshiarpuri, a renowned Urdu poet and lyricist. The song was composed by the legendary Pakistani singer-songwriter Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. It was first played by Khan during his first visit to India in 1979, when Indian actor and filmmaker Raj Kapoor invited him at the wedding of his son Rishi Kapoor.The song's devotional content, dedicated to Lord Krishna, has made it a favorite among Hindu devotees, who...

Vikas

@CowperKettle I love it.

I mean the original.

CowperKettle

Ah!

@Vikas Previously I only loved one song by Ali Khan, the 16-minute Maki Madni

But this one is also nice, at least under the guitar accompaniment

> The song's devotional content, dedicated to Lord Krishna, has made it a favorite among Hindu devotees, who often include it in their devotional gatherings as a bhajan. The song continues to be a popular choice for performances at both bhajan and qawwali concerts.

Vikas

I love him for the fact also that they would sing live and it would get recorded and become like a professionally recorded song. There is like no editing.

@CowperKettle Yeah

Many of his sogs still get a remake by new singers and get popular again.

CowperKettle

05:16

Yes, a great singer

Vikas

Pakistan has given great singers and all of them are extremely popular in Pakistan and India.

Vikas

05:38

> The Opposition has alleged that the ruling party is using this India vs. Bharat debate as a ploy to divert attention away from the governance shortcomings responsible for issues like unemployment, poverty, and rising prices. They have also linked this matter to the Opposition Front identifying itself as INDIA.

Xanne

05:50

Daily Octordle #590
5️⃣1️⃣
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🔟7️⃣
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Score: 59

CowperKettle

06:09

A former Wagner fighter returned to Shabrovsky, part of Yekaterinburg, and has been terrorising locals for weeks, running around with a knife, breaking windows, busting into shops. The locals caught him and took him to the police station. e1.ru/text/incidents/2023/09/06/72677960

In 2019 he was sentenced to 10 years of jail for murder, and prior to that he was jailed for smaller crimes.

Now he is a war hero with the St George's Cross and some medals.

His face is disfigured from a fire he got into while fighting in Bakhmut.

CowperKettle

06:24

Carl Shulman (Pt 2) - AI Takeover, Bio & Cyber Attacks, Detecting Deception, & Humanity's Far Future

►

He's right at 00:45, about the conquest of the Aztec Empire

The Europeans were able to attract some disgruntled locals, a lot of them.

Thus, some AI-savvy group could attract millions of disgruntled simple folk on their side and wreck havoc.

It doesn't need to be some scene like in the Terminator movies. People themselves will help AI to execute a takeover.

CowperKettle

06:47

> What has one arm, is yellow and can't swim ?
An excavator. You didn't find it funny ? The excavator operator did neither.

Michael Rybkin

07:44

Tell me please if this sounds fine to you guys?

There's no surviving that. He's a goner!

Vikas

10:47

Could anyone please explain what person this post is talking about? I don't understand who are they calling Nazi sympathizer here. iamc.com/…

CowperKettle

11:13

Bicycle School bus in Netherland

►

Laurel

@Cerberus It's a gif I got from a bug report/FR on meta about spoilers i.sstatic.net/QetVs.gif

@MichaelRybkin Sounds fine to me

CowperKettle

11:34

@jlliagre - do you know which is the largest French-speaking city in the world? I've just came across it in Wikipedia.

jlliagre

@CowperKettle My first guess would be Paris, but I'm wrong if you ask. Is it an African one?

Brandin

@Vikas It seems that the goal of that is to entice you to get a subscription to the service to continue reading the full article. This practice is called clickbait.

CowperKettle

@jlliagre Yes, it's in Africa

alphabet

11:50

@Vikas It's M.S. Golwalkar. (I followed the link to the Haaretz article and used archive.is to get past the paywall.)

CowperKettle

> Avec une population estimée en 2021 à plus de 17 millions d'habitants dans sa zone métropolitaine, elle est la troisième agglomération d'Afrique derrière Le Caire et Lagos

jlliagre

@CowperKettle Bigger than I thought, Kinshasa.

Leopoldville as we called it when I was a kid.

Vikas

12:23

@Brandin Oh. I could find two two links about this news. One was asking to subscribe.

@alphabet Thanks. I thought this page didn't ask for subscription. They linked it to the original subscription website.

Robusto

13:10

#Worldle #594 5/6 (100%)
🟩⬜⬜⬜⬜➡️
🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜↖️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨⬆️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨↗️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
⭐⭐
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

I can't remember doing so poorly. Well, islands. What can I say?

And of course, this one would be the one where I guess the flag correctly.

🌎 Sep 7, 2023 🌍
🔥 23 | Avg. Guesses: 4.34
⬜🟩 = 2

globle-game.com
#globle

That's more like it.

(Lucky first guess.)

Vikas

13:44

@Robusto Looks like a wrench.

Robusto

@Vikas I was thinking it looked like some kind of ocean-floor denizen with huge jaws.

Vikas

@Robusto If I look that way yeah I can see that also now. There also seems to be an eye.

Robusto

Wordle 810 5/6

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🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

jlliagre

14:03

Wordle 810 4/6

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Michael Rybkin

@Laurel Thank you.

Robusto

Daily Quordle 591
9️⃣4️⃣
6️⃣8️⃣
m-w.com/games/quordle/

Daily Octordle #591
6️⃣3️⃣
🕛🕚
8️⃣7️⃣
9️⃣🔟
Score: 66

Meh.

Daily Sequence Octordle #591
4️⃣5️⃣
6️⃣7️⃣
8️⃣9️⃣
🔟🕚
Score: 60

CowperKettle

15:38

@Robusto I would not even try this one. I've no idea what it is.

Looks like some atoll.

#Worldle #594 X/6 (96%)
🟩🟩⬜⬜⬜➡️
🟩🟩⬜⬜⬜↗️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨➡️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨↗️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨⬆️
🟩🟨⬜⬜⬜⬅️
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

Cerberus

16:16

Yeah I don't know those either.

@Laurel Ah, yeah, entirely unrelated.

MetaEd

17:04

Wordle 810 4/6

⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛⬛⬛🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

CowperKettle

> We assessed personality and preferences for and desired reactions to a taxonomy of jokes. First, unexpectedly, enjoyment of making puns was unrelated to everyday sadism.

sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886922005025

MetaEd

@CowperKettle clearly they did not include any dads in that assessment

CowperKettle

LOL

MetaEd

17:47

Still no sign of @tchrist ... hope he's ok

Robusto

@CowperKettle Yeah. I'm just lucky to do even that well because I just started rattling off every island name I could think of in that area.

Throw enough shit against the wall, some of it is bound to stick.

MetaEd

18:03

@Robusto depends

Robusto

@MetaEd Well, if you eat a lot of teflon ...

MetaEd

18:16

@Robusto no I'm saying the solution is depends

Robusto

@MetaEd Did you mean "Depends"?

MetaEd

@Robusto yEs I dId

Robusto

So you do have a shift key.

Mitch

19:06

@CowperKettle Wait... I'm slow about the course of events... so Mariupol's been captured and held stably by the Russians, and the Russians are rebuilding?

@Laurel so where's your draft? No pressure.

Laurel

@Mitch Alright so this is really stupid but the tab crashed and I had to use OCR to recover most of it from some screenshots and then rewrite some lost stuff. But I did, and I saved it somewhere safe (in text format). Right now, I'm waiting for a little more mod feedback before posting (how cruel of the world to be round and put us in different time zones).

Vikas

@Mitch Stable until Ukraine finds out breakthrough in that direction. Just need to collapse some defense blocks.

Then I can expect some good will gestures.

Laurel

@MetaEd By the way, I'm not entirely clear on what's up with him, but he has been visiting the site every now and then (just so you don't get too worried)

Mitch

@Laurel If we were to do it all over again, Flat Earth has a lot fewer design difficulties.

Laurel

@Mitch I'll write up a feature-request right away

Mitch

19:14

@Vikas As far as one can ascribe human characteristics to nations, I wouldn't want to rely on Russia's 'good will'.

@Laurel No rush at all, do it as you see fit. I was just responding to the starboard.

Laurel

@Mitch Sorry, it's too late. I've already started on it, and hopefully the Physics crowd won't have any problem with changing the shape of the earth ever so slightly like that

Mitch

@Laurel Maybe they'd like the extra traffic? Also all the people on Skeptics would have to flip all their answers... and questions.

eg "How can you cure someone of their fantasy that the earth is spherical? Showing pictures just isn't enough evidence"

Laurel

20:57

7

Q: Testing an AI-generated content policy banner on Stack Overflow

TL;DR: We are planning to run an A/B test for two weeks on Stack Overflow in late September to draw attention to the site-specific policy about the use of AI-Generated content when creating answers on the site. As part of the agreements made during negotiations, we took the concerns raised durin...

discussion featured announcement chatgpt a-b-testing

Hopefully this goes well and we'll eventually have it over here too

MetaEd

@Laurel thank you

Mitch

21:35

Request to vote to reopen:

2

Q: If a loan word is used with a different meaning in a given language, is it still a loan word?

Spanish speakers use 'basket,' for basketball, 'smoking' for black tie and 'freaki' for geek. They also use 'camping' for camp site and 'parking' for car park, but the participles retain the same meaning. The latter are loan words, but I wonder whether it's accurate to use the term 'loan word' if...

loanwords

The current single answer is... wanting. The question itself could be improved. But it shouldn't be closed.

@Laurel I'm confused. I thought that though early this year AI-answers were banned, but that the SE company decided that no, AI -good- (intentionally worded to be vague).

To be fair, anybody's first thoughts about using gen AI for a Q&A site would be that it is ludicrous, given that it is sites like this that are used as the training data.

Robusto

@Mitch Done.

Mitch

The AI isn't magic. It's using a bunch of existing text to 'blenderize' its answers from existing text.

@Robusto 👍🔥🎉

Robusto

@Mitch I thought that too. I didn't think it possible I could be even more confused about this issue, but apparently I was wrong.

Mitch

I'm working on my translation of Emma into emojis

@Robusto I'm pretty sure I can be more confused. I didn't expect for them to actively pursue that.

Robusto

@Mitch With a vengeance.

Laurel

21:44

@Mitch Ah yeah, it's kinda confusing if you haven't been closely following meta. They reversed the decision that basically said we can't delete any AI, and now we can delete AI content if it matches enough heuristics.

Robusto

What did we ever do to them that they would persecute us so?

Laurel

767

Q: Moderation strike: Results of negotiations

We have reached the following conclusions during negotiations between community-selected strike representatives and representatives of Stack Exchange, Inc. This aims to address most of the concerns detailed in the strike letter, the initial strike announcement, and the conditions outlined in the ...

discussion community company moderation-strike

jlliagre

#Worldle #594 X/6 (86%)
🟩🟩🟨⬜⬜⬅️
🟩🟩🟨⬜⬜➡️
🟩🟩🟩🟨⬜➡️
🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜➡️
🟩🟨⬜⬜⬜⬅️
🟩🟩🟨⬜⬜➡️
⭐
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
I only got the flag :-)

Laurel

I planned to post an update to my own meta post on our meta but I didn't get around to it

I've been pretty involved with AI stuff tho. I worked really hard and got the first new heuristic approved (other than the ones we got through negotiations)

Mitch

@Laurel I mean those heuristics aren't fool proof (I think that's what 'heuristic' means, 'not fool proof' - from Doric (or is it Attic (or is it Ionian)) Greek 'eurisko' 'I likely fail to have had not unfound it' @Cerberus?)

@Laurel Oh. So it's all settled then?

Laurel

21:50

Yeah everyone stopped striking at the start of August iirc

Robusto

@Laurel If ever a post needed a TL;DR, this one is it.

Mitch

As much as i like to sing La Marsellaise or whistle the Soviet Union anthem and claim solidarity with the workers of the world and all, 'strike' sounds a little too much like a table pounded just a little bit too extra, enough to rattle the tea pot.

And that makes me uneasy.

Laurel

@Mitch I'm finding that I can't delete all the posts I suspect are AI with our existing heuristics, but that's also why I'm working so hard to get new ones. And I have a really good eye now for detecting AI content

Mitch

Like I'd have to redip my shortbread, but it's already a bit soggy, but now that I have that idea I really feel like I have to do it.

Robusto

@Mitch I think that was the point of the strike: to make people feel uneasy.

Mitch

21:53

For the record, I find shortbread near to a tooth-shattering ingot of sand flavored concrete.

ie I don't like it.

@Robusto Well, good job ol chap. Mission accomplished. I shake my fist in comradery and all that.

@Laurel Cripes, it's September?

I was only just getting used to summer

Mentally I'm still in mid July.

@Laurel is there a way for you to put it on a queue so that those with near-mod powers can vote to delete?

(Pardon me if we've discussed this already)

Have you considered that using ChatGPT is a -huge- benefit for writers who are non-native speakers (and also the readers of their text). ie it is an often suggested strategy for NNSs to write something then ask chatGPT to fix problems in it.

Do the criteria allow for that?

Laurel

@Mitch I mean, I could still flag them into the low quality posts queue, but I don't think they actually qualify as low-quality and the idea of people who don't have experience with AI deciding to delete posts they think are AI makes me uncomfortable

Q: Under what conditions is a non-mod allowed to vote to delete content for suspicion of violating the AI-generated-content policy?

There's a network-wide policy for mods in (Interim) Policy on AI-content detection reports that states: [...] it is expected that if the CM team reaches out to contact a moderator to discuss an action, the moderator will be able to provide the heuristics used to make the determination at that ti...

support status-review vote-to-delete rules chatgpt

However, that was posted on SO where many of the users have experience with identifying AI posts, even to the point where they've been invited into the secret AI chat/team and know about the heuristics

Mitch

22:11

I may have given a negative impression of Chatte j'ai pété, it's only because others have stuck their head in the poop. It's amazing, if you know what you can do with it.

@Laurel Oh. I was more thinking that it would be put on the plain old delete queue, no reason given, and delete voters can judge as they see fit (though unfortunately the delete queue is underutilized).

Again, I may have given the wrong impression. Yes, I am the first to vote to reopen only OK questions. But if it is closed for a while and on the delete queue I'm more than happen to give it a little extra shove into oblivion.

Laurel

@Mitch If it was just proofreading, our current heuristics wouldn't cover it. (It does cover people who claim it was just proofreading but actually had an AI write most or all of their answer)

@Mitch What delete queue? Low Quality Posts?

The 10k tools?

MetaEd

aah, it's so nice as an ex mod to sit back and just watch this stuff flow by :)

Laurel

I can't actually put a question into the 10k tools list anymore since all my delete votes are binding

Laurel

22:35

Anyway, AI is not really a huge problem here imo because right now I only know about 5-10 undeleted AI posts, none of which were noticed by anyone else

Mitch

22:52

@Laurel These: english.stackexchange.com/…

Laurel

@Mitch Yeah, those are the 10k tools. Like I said, I can't put posts into that since my votes are binding

jlliagre

23:46

#waffle594 5/5

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩⭐🟩⭐🟩
🟩🟩⭐🟩🟩
🟩⭐🟩⭐🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

🔥 streak: 31
🥈 #wafflesilverteam
wafflegame.net

CowperKettle

@Mitch Yes, there's an active rebuilding program, many buildings are built anew, others are renovated.

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…