English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Laurel

00:38

@alphabet ^^

M.A.R.

01:17

@Laurel good luck, you'll need it

@Laurel now I need to learn why people trust wikiHow

alphabet

@Laurel Even the raccoons are moving to suburbia, though.

M.A.R.

Can't blame a raccoon for wanting to go up in the world

alphabet

How to Stop a Wedding

How to be a Juggalo

M.A.R.

@alphabet even the illustrator there is like WTF

alphabet

Juggalo face paint is an offensive form of "raccoonface"

Laurel

01:22

@alphabet That was a roller coaster of facial expressions lol

M.A.R.

@alphabet How to be insufferable

Whoop whoop

Laurel

@alphabet I thought that said jigalo which I now remember is properly spelled gigolo

@M.A.R. I'm a little concerned what's going to happen when I go to sleep and can't leave persuasive comments. However, if anyone was going to do this, I have pretty much everything going in my favor that could be (including the fact that I moderate both English sites)

alphabet

@M.A.R. Well, the ACLU are big fans.

Laurel

Oh that reminds me…

Feeds

Laurel has added Laurel to the list of this room's owners.

Laurel

01:28

Heh

alphabet

How to not get caught cheating

Laurel

@alphabet The ads kinda want them to be caught tho

Mitch

@alphabet Oh that reminds me.

M.A.R.

@Feeds what can you do as an RO that you can't as a mod? @Laurel

Or is it more like a "I'm available in chat, for anyone wondering" signal?

Mitch

I'm a heavy metal fan.

Said the windmill.

M.A.R.

01:40

Lead poisoning is no joke

Mitch

snirt

M.A.R.

@Laurel "it's wrong and immoral. You should be ashamed of entertaining thoughts of killing innocent people. Now here's how the Unabomber made his bombs."

Laurel

@M.A.R. There's some edge case with events or something that would probably never come up. I just did it to symbolize that I'm going mad with power

Mitch

I haven't heard a mwahaha from you yet

M.A.R.

@Mitch reasonably smart supervillains only do it when you're dangling over a fire or acid pit, not before

Laurel

01:45

@Mitch I did it earlier

Cerberus

@Laurel Oh, that's useful, I mean, terrible.

Mitch

Crocodiles and snakes are pretty 'done'

Laurel

3 hours ago, by Laurel

Hahahahaha I hope this goes well

M.A.R.

@Mitch roast croc? Yum?

Laurel

Anyway apparently room owners get pinged if people request to join their chat, which couldn't even happen here afaik since this is public

alphabet

01:48

7 Ways to Enrich Uranium

M.A.R.

@Cerberus reminds me of the news a while earlier about an old lady writing a "how to kill your husband" novel or something being convicted of shooting her husband

Cerberus

@Laurel Oh, my, this is good, I have read the first paragraph.

Will continue reading.

Mitch

@Laurel I'm so sorry my liege. You have a wonderful laugh. Please continue ---over---- using your powers

alphabet

Did you know you can make bombs with Drano and tinfoil?

Just some helpful life advice

M.A.R.

It is a very dense article without these helpful illustrations

alphabet

01:53

How to Behave Around Gay People if You Don't Accept Them

Laurel

@alphabet Makes me think of this: reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/12sn0kk/grandma_exploit/jgzd344/…

M.A.R.

@Laurel just be ready to use a diamond first from time to time. I suspect some notorious close voters will not really change anything in their closure patterns

alphabet

How to be Jewish

How to Join Scientology

M.A.R.

@alphabet just to make sure I don't mind: Are you happy? And are you not hurting anyone?

Laurel

@Cerberus Wait, just to be clear you mean the meta post, not the chat comment lol right???

@alphabet By step 3, the man was kissing another man lol. Also this:

alphabet

01:57

How to Cry Without Looking Unattractive

Laurel

CowperKettle

I'm having skin cracks on the back of my hand again, from taking just 100 mcg L-methylfolate

alphabet

How to be a Furry

CowperKettle

How to Rule the Universe Without Attracting the Attention of the Nursing Staff

M.A.R.

> Applying the principles of the Tone Scale and Dynamics to your life is thought to help eliminate the reliance of modern society on mood-altering substances and other primarily commercial methods of “self-improvement.”

Yep, checks out. The one thing that tells me it's a religion is it's practitioners say "you're an unhappy drug addict because you don't believe in our stuff".

@CowperKettle you should write one on "How to Defeat Both Diabetes Type 1 and 2"

CowperKettle

02:02

@M.A.R. Semaglutide just two days ago was shown to defeat Diabetes type 1

Drug in Ozempic may enable patients with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes to stave off insulin use, small study suggests edition.cnn.com/2023/09/08/health/…

M.A.R.

A recent trial from Novo Nordisk showed semaglutide also helps obese people without diabetes, and it's caused a bit of ruckus over at Europe about subsidies and funding

CowperKettle

If you take semaglutide with lobster bisque, it will also help gain muscle mass.

alphabet

@M.A.R. No and not intentionally

M.A.R.

@alphabet then Tolkien was lying to me about gayness

> Consider completing an audit. Auditing is completed by meeting with an experienced Scientologist who will guide you through the process, asking questions and reading your Thetan quality with an E-meter.

alphabet

How to Talk to Your Teenager about Masturbation

CowperKettle

02:09

I'll buy some hydrocortison ointment, maybe it will stop skin cracks from appearing.

They are painful.

Word of the minute: metaphysis - it's where the epiphysis joins the diaphysis.

alphabet

IIRC diabetes can cause skin problems

CowperKettle

> The metaphysis is the region where the epiphysis joins the diaphysis; in a growing bone this corresponds to the calcified layer of the epiphyseal plate together with the interdigitating bone

@alphabet In me, it's from L-methylfolate

Laurel

@alphabet Bad! I thought I told you to be happy. And because I'm a moderator you have to listen to me

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle on dialysis, there was a short period that I took allopurinol. It gave me horrible itching and an exoliative dermatitis. Two years after the transplant, I started needing it again, but nothing happened this time

Well, I'm assuming the skin reactions that still sometimes happen are due to prednisolone

CowperKettle

I feel myself psychologically better on L-methylfolate, but it keeps getting me painful skin, oozing blood from cracks

Cerberus

02:15

@Laurel Haha correct.

CowperKettle

> Apple Researchers Propose a New Tensor Decomposition Model for Collaborative Filtering with Implicit Feedback

I wonder what a 19th century scientist would make of this headline.

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle would be amazed at what we can do with an apple today

alphabet

I once spent a week wondering what my downstairs neighbors were doing that was causing the floor to shake. Then it started happening outside also. Then I realized it was a side effect of lamotrigine.

M.A.R.

@alphabet effort tremor?

Tacrolimus gives me essential tremor. Usually only noticeable when I'm pouring something in a beaker

alphabet

@M.A.R. No, vertigo. At its worst, it felt like I kept suddenly accelerating and then coming to a sudden stop, despite not moving.

CowperKettle

02:20

M.A.R.

In the early days after a transplant, when tacrolimus dose is high, the patients do some sort of involuntary African dance with their hands

CowperKettle

That's bad, I'm sorry to hear that!

alphabet

Y'know what's fun? Very slowly increasing your dosage of a medication to prevent "toxic epidermal necrolysis"

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle eh, usually they're pretty happy days for the patients. Being dialysis free is a great reward.

CowperKettle

Ah!

Laurel

02:24

@alphabet How long did it take to get the seizure meds right?

M.A.R.

The folder where the patients sign looks hilarious though

@alphabet if it's for your epilespy, TEN is not the reason. AFAIK SJS/TEN is idiosyncratic, meaning a clear relation with the dose is not established

alphabet

@M.A.R. It wasn't for epilepsy, it's because I was Special Sad.

Have I mentioned that my brain is f'ed up in a wide variety of ways?

Laurel

Aw

M.A.R.

Oh, I was wrong

alphabet

@Laurel Actually no time. The first medication I tried (levetiracetam) worked. I ended up switching to a different one (brivaracetam) for...complicated reasons.

M.A.R.

02:28

But, like, 51% wrong

Laurel

@alphabet Ah, I guess the other stuff that was going on got in the way?

M.A.R.

> Other than age, there are as yet no factors identified that are known to predict the risk of occurrence or the severity of rash caused by lamotrigine. There are suggestions, yet to be proven, that the risk of rash may also be increased by coadministration of lamotrigine with valproate (includes valproic acid and divalproex sodium), exceeding the recommended initial dose of lamotrigine, or exceeding the recommended dose escalation for lamotrigine. However, cases have been reported in the absence of these factors.

OTOH, in the adult dosing subsection, UpToDate says

> Adhere strictly to recommended initial dose, titration schedules, and adjustments to reduce the risk of severe, including potentially fatal, cutaneous reactions and other hypersensitivity reactions.

alphabet

@M.A.R. Here, at least, you're supposed to extremely slowly increase your dose over a period of several weeks.

Yeah, it's the "titration schedules" part.

M.A.R.

@alphabet same here, but I used to think the slow titration is due to the pharmacological actions of lamotrigine. I knew about the valproate interaction, but I still think dose doesn't have much to do with it

Laurel

I guess I have the impression that epilepsy is hard to treat but my perception of that is not even based on epilepsy but pseudo-seizures that everyone thought was epilepsy

Which is definitely hard to treat with anticonvulsants except maybe through placebo. But they often have side effects

M.A.R.

02:33

@Laurel depends. It's certainly harder to treat than a sore throat . . . Uh, most sore throats. It's kinda like saying "cancer is hard to treat". It again depends. ALL in kids isn't that hard to treat.

alphabet

Tl;dr: they thought the levetiracetam might be contributing to my mood issues (though I'd been taking it for years without issues), so they tried switching entirely to lamotrigine. The lamotrigine fixed my mood issues but I started getting partial seizures. So I had to go back onto a racetam drug also, but they chose brivaracetam since it (possibly) has a lower risk of psychiatric side effects.

It was a fun year.

@Laurel It depends. I had it very easy; for some people it's much harder to treat.

M.A.R.

@alphabet it could always be worse. It sounds like it was hit-or-miss

alphabet

@M.A.R. Indeed. The joys of polypharmacy.

CowperKettle

M.A.R.

When I grow up, I wanna make new drugs that don't give you lethal rashes

CowperKettle

02:39

@alphabet I want to try levetiracetam. What if it will stop my "sensory seizures".

But I should get a prescription somewhere.

Poetic of the day: mew (common gull)

alphabet

As I recall, nobody has any effing clue why anticonvulsants help bipolar disorder

CowperKettle

> From helm to sea they saw him leap,
As arrow from the string,
And dive into the water deep,
As mew upon the wing.

@alphabet Because the "calm down" neurons?

alphabet

I have...some sort of cyclic mood disorder that doesn't meet normal diagnostic criteria. Lamotrigine mostly fixed things. Yay.

Laurel

@M.A.R. Yeah, some epilepsy is so bad that doctors decide to cut the brain in half to stop it. It's so fascinating, I used to research this type of stuff a lot

alphabet

Just had to find the highest dose that didn't cause constant vertigo.

Laurel

02:42

@alphabet There's a lot of drugs like that. I think even some otc painkiller too

Where we just don't know why they work

alphabet

Yeah, Tylenol is one of them.

CowperKettle

@alphabet The golden standard in bipolar is lithium

alphabet

Anyway, I am done ranting about my mental problems

CowperKettle

But one needs to closely monitor its blood levels

I tried lithium, it felt nice, but my blood sugar went high.

And I was sleepy.

Laurel

Corpus callosotomy

Corpus callosotomy is a palliative surgical procedure for the treatment of medically refractory epilepsy. In this procedure the corpus callosum is cut through in an effort to limit the spread of epileptic activity between the two halves of the brain.After the operation the brain has much more difficulty sending messages between the hemispheres. Although the corpus callosum is the largest white matter tract connecting the hemispheres, some limited interhemispheric communication is still possible via the anterior commissure and posterior commissure. "Efficacy and relatively low permanent morbidity...

CowperKettle

02:46

Eponymous of the day: Couvelaire uterus (uteroplacental apoplexy)

> a life-threatening condition in which loosening of the placenta (abruptio placentae) causes bleeding that penetrates into the uterine myometrium forcing its way into the peritoneal cavity.

Laurel

Imagine having two functional but separate halves of the brain. I think research shows that they usually decide to work together but not always

M.A.R.

@Laurel well, there's "hasn't entered the textbooks yet" don't-know, "we're almost sure" don't-know, and "no bloody idea" don't-know.

The lattermost is pretty rare. It's a big world and some pharmacologist somewhere daydreams about the mechanism of action of some drug and publishes it

Laurel

@alphabet I don't mind listening btw

M.A.R.

We don't know why antipsychotics or anticonvulsants stop the cycling in bipolar, but we have quite a few ideas

With acetaminophen, it's "we're almost sure but there's more to find out".

alphabet

@CowperKettle IIRC that's mostly to prevent manic episodes which I haven't had.

CowperKettle

02:51

@alphabet Lithuim also reduces suicidality and looks like it does something good to neuroplasticity, if I remember correctly

But its safe range is so narrow.

M.A.R.

@alphabet most bipolar cases are like that, though of course I have no idea about your diagnosis. The guy is manic for two weeks and deflated for two years.

alphabet

@M.A.R. I haven't had a hypomanic episode that quite met the diagnostic criteria, hence the lack of a definitive diagnosis.

CowperKettle

I failed the test for depression by one point. Gathered too few points.

alphabet

I did have this one...thing between depressive episodes. I was too aware that my mind wasn't functioning normally to enjoy it, which I suppose is a good thing.

CowperKettle

@alphabet Can you exercise?

Laurel

03:02

I'm pretty proud that I've been exercising regularly lately :3

I didn't use to

CowperKettle

I run, but I get worse from it mentally.

At least for a couple days after a run.

Laurel

That's pretty weird. I wonder why

CowperKettle

I feel emotional and ruminational (depressive repeating thoughts)

Laurel

I don't like running so I've been doing biking lately. Imma get a gym membership so I can get back to swimming too

CowperKettle

This is good!

BRB

Laurel