I woke up dead tired, and lay in bed for couple hours. Now drinking coffee. Sometimes I have spells of two or three days when I sleep/drowse for 15 hours/day. I've no idea what's up. Venlafaxine does not help.
This is a good biomarker of fascism. When people stop reacting so wildly at a quotation from a children's song, this would mean the inflammation is over.
In about 2017, my "boss" asked me to remove "Best Regards" in Ukrainian from my automatic email reply template. I had "Best Regards" there in Russian, English and Ukrainian. For some reason, it was very bad to have it in Ukrainian.
I've no idea why I'm feeling tired at 80% of the time, but still can run for 10 km if I drink a lot of coffee. But afterwards, still tired and can do nothing, the brain does not work.
@alphabet LOL
@alphabet She hosted some refugees at her flat from Eastern Ukraine in 2014, who fled from the war.
She just thinks that it was great to be together, in the last decades of the USSR.
A united country.
In my school in Noyabrsk, a teacher who had relatives in Ukraine also said in 1992 that it felt unreal to have to cross a border in order to go and visit them.
I think that a huge number of common people did not want it all to fall apart.
An Uzbek friend, a woman, told me in 2014 that a lot of her friends in Uzbekistan would gladly reunite with Russia.
Because after the USSR broke up, Central Asia collapsed into corruption and stuff.
Indeed. I get the sense that the USSR's collapse came as a surprise to nearly everyone and was more a freak accident than something anyone planned or expected.
The only people I knew who really wanted to be apart were people from the Baltic states.
Me and my dad visited a camp of Baltic workers who were constructing a road in taiga in Siberia. My father was to measure the evenness of the road and check the construction process. And it felt like the Baltic people felt themselves as separate.
@alphabet I really always considered Ukraine and Russia to be just two regions of the same country.
@CowperKettle So did Putin, apparently. I get the sense that the Maidan Revolution was a turning point. (I think they've rebranded it as the "Revolution of Dignity.")
At the beginning of Perestroika, my dad was at a friend's flat watching some sport TV program with other men. And one of the men said about Gorbachev - "he has spun such a great flywheel that it will crush him". I wondered what it meant. Because I was a kid.
@CowperKettle As someone who didn't live through that time: Gorbachev does seem rather incompetent, in that he couldn't reform the system without making it self-destruct.
@alphabet Yes, it's a pity. Maybe he should have reinstated Stalin-era cooperatives (small market-driven companies no more than about 20 workers). I mean, without reforming all the rest.
But he decided to also bring in the freedom of the press.
Maybe there are good books explaining why it all collapsed.
Yegor Timurovich Gaidar (Russian: Его́р Тиму́рович Гайда́р, pronounced [jɪˈɡor tʲɪˈmurəvʲɪtɕ ɡɐjˈdar]; 19 March 1956 – 16 December 2009) was a Soviet and Russian economist, politician, and author, and was the Acting Prime Minister of Russia from 15 June 1992 to 14 December 1992.
He was the architect of the controversial shock therapy reforms administered in Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which brought him both praise and harsh criticism. He participated in the preparation of the Belovezh Accords. Many Russians held him responsible for the economic hardships that plagued the country...
They wanted to improve the economy through the 500 days program.
The 500 Days Program (Russian: программа "500 дней") was a shock therapy program to overcome the economic crisis in the Soviet Union by means of a transition to a market economy. Intended to comprehensively change the Soviet Union in a span of two years, it was ultimately a factor leading to the Soviet Union's collapse.
== History ==
The program was proposed by economist Grigory Yavlinsky.: 199 According to Yavlinsky, the Soviet Union needed "to be built anew, nor reformed.": 199 He proposed the 500 Days Program to implement a form of economic shock therapy which proposed to transform the Soviet...
Which was never implemented, never even launched.
But many common people on the street will tell you that Evil Liberals broke down the USSR by implementing the Evil 500 Days Program.
Which is laughable because it was aimed at saving the USSR.
> During the two and half years of the war, there were about 100,000 overall military casualties, while between 500,000 and 2 million Biafran civilians died of starvation.
The Biafran Airlift was an international humanitarian relief effort that transported food and medicine to Biafra during the 1967–1970 secession war from Nigeria (Nigerian Civil War). It was the largest civilian airlift and, after the Berlin airlift of 1948–49, the largest non-combatant airlift of any kind ever carried out. The airlift was largely a series of joint efforts by Protestant and Catholic church groups, and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs), operating civilian and military aircraft with volunteer (mostly) civilian crews and support personnel. Several national governments also...
Turns out the Medicine Sans Frontiers was founded because of that war.
> The Nigerian government on Thursday announced the formal reintroduction of history as a subject in the country's basic education curriculum after it was abolished 13 years ago (November 2022)
@CowperKettle Médecins Sans Frontières, as @jlliagre would say.
@CowperKettle A famous tongue-twister.
Others are: She sells seashells by the seashore. Toy boat (say it three times rapidly, if you can) Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. And the most infamous one: I slit three sheets, three sheets I slit. ;-)
Sarah Ashton-Cirillo (born 9 July 1977), formerly Sarah Cirillo and Sarah Ashton, is an American former journalist serving as a spokesperson for Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces, in which she is a junior sergeant. A self-described "recovering political operative" from Las Vegas, Nevada, she was active in Nevada politics from 2020 to 2021, including an abortive run for Las Vegas City Council. She arrived in Ukraine in March 2022, shortly after the full-scale Russian invasion, and has variously served as a war correspondent, a representative in aid negotiations, a civilian analyst with the Ministry...
A former guy who transitioned into a woman and now serves with the Ukrainian Army.
> she resigned from LGBTQ Nation to become a combat medic in Ukraine's Noman Çelebicihan Battalion, a Crimean Tatar unit
> "I'm having guests in my apartment"
> "Russia Builds New 70km Defense Lines in Zaporizhia" -- just as I had thought, it will go on for years.
Russia has mountains of money and materials.
A pro-Russian guy who has been in the war since 2014 and has been helping to improve radio communications, was harassed for his candid reporting (he pointed out the lies of the official propaganda), and decided to join a frontline unit. t.me/s/wehearfromyanina
I was reading him because at least he has been candid and did not subscribe to the official bullshit.
A rotten system that forces the most ardent supporters to fall silent or suicidal.
The Chuhaister (Ukrainian: Чуга́йстер) is a Ukrainian tutelary deity of the forests. He is specific to the Ukrainian Carpathians. It's a fantastic image in Ukrainian mythology, unknown to other Slavic peoples.
== Description ==
He was imagined as cheerful and overgrown with black or white fur and blue eyes. He dances, sings, and hunts Mavkas that lure young woodcutters and shepherds into the wilderness and destroy them. There was a belief that this was a man who had been cursed by sorcerers, who had been "done to", i.e. given a reason. Sometimes Chuhaister was imagined in the form of a wind or...
I came across a song named after this deity. I never knew about him.
> I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
> I pledge my head to clearer thinking, my heart to greater loyalty, my hands to larger service, and my health to better living, for my club, my community, my country, and my world.
Drunk soldier in Kazan threw a stun grenade near the porch of a building to give some fun to small kids, who agreed. A woman who was entering the flight of stairs was not impressed though. t.me/bazabazon/21445
> The sound was loud, but clearly quieter than the reaction of the woman standing at the intercom. She started shouting obscenities and, while the culprit of the noise was apologizing, declared that people like him “should be killed.”
A language site needs a tireless editor to make sure things are tagged right. Maybe we could put Alphabet on a hamster wheel and harness his energy to retag questions
The unmoved mover (Ancient Greek: ὃ οὐ κινούμενον κινεῖ, romanized: ho ou kinoúmenon kineî, lit. 'that which moves without being moved') or prime mover (Latin: primum movens) is a concept advanced by Aristotle as a primary cause (or first uncaused cause) or "mover" of all the motion in the universe. As is implicit in the name, the unmoved mover moves other things, but is not itself moved by any prior action. In Book 12 (Greek: Λ) of his Metaphysics, Aristotle describes the unmoved mover as being perfectly beautiful, indivisible, and contemplating only the perfect contemplation: self-contemplation...
> In Book 12 (Greek: Λ) of his Metaphysics, Aristotle describes the unmoved mover as being perfectly beautiful, indivisible, and contemplating only the tags on ELU SE.
> Even the best AI models studied can be fooled by nonsense sentences, showing that “their computations are missing something about the way humans process language.” zuckermaninstitute.columbia.edu/…
Ancient Egyptian medical term of the midnight: aaa
> Of the ten known ancient-Egyptian medical papyri, five, including the Ebers Papyrus from 1550 BC, describe urological problems such as enlarged prostate, bladder stones, cystitis and urinary frequency. Many archaeologists believe that the pharaonic term used to describe these urinary problems — aaa — might well refer to S. haematobium infection, known today as urinary schistosomiasis.
> The first epidemiological survey in 1937 indicated that infection rate was as high as 85% among people in the Northern and Eastern parts of the Delta.
> By 1993, the prevalence of urinary schistosomiasis had fallen to less than 7%.
@alphabet I gave a hundred dollars to my father and did so yesterday. Generally, the so refers back to an earlier action in the same sentence with the same subject and verb/predicate. He squandered all his father's fortune and did so in a single year. Because the did is anaphoric to the the action verb. [did give, did squander]. I gave $100 dollars to my father and she did so too.
@user726941 Not more context. It needs to refer back to the action verb/phrase in the previous phrase. The dog was lapping up all the milk from the spill and was doing so with great gusto. :)
Re tagging though... 1) as a UI/UX thing, it should be more available and easier to use for regular users 2) or it should be automated with a keyword/tag extractor
@Mitch I did some experimentation with ChatGPT and trying to make it suggest tags that went so poorly I stopped trying almost immediately. (It's probably the wrong tool for the job.) You need to know a bit about site culture and a lot about grammar to be good at retagging.
I would get behind reducing the privilege for the inline tag editor, but for some reason that's tied to the ability to cast delete votes at 10k, so ehhhh
Also I hate when people create new tags because they're usually really bad (but it's also annoying to keep track of that)
@Robusto The issue is that "did so" has certain odd restrictions: "I bought a car, and she did so a book" is obviously wrong. It gets more complicated with prepositional phrases.
@alphabet I think, though, that in those two sentences "did so" barely squeaks through. It definitely puts a hitch in your smooth reading, but then you get it and register a mental downvote for awkwardness.
Why keep trying force an anaphoric did so into a new sentence? It won't work. I relied on my mother and he did so [relied on her] too. VERSUS: I relied on my mother and he relied on his. This is not complicated.
@Robusto No, Robusto. It just does not work. I'm outta here.
@Mitch Do you consider both acceptable, or both unacceptable? Of "I gave $500 to my father, and she did so to charity" vs "...and she did so to charity"?
The "did so" refers to the entire phrase: "I gave 500 dollars to my father" and not just "I gave 500 dollars" which is why you can't switch horses in midstream.
@alphabet Yes, I disagree with him and have shown why. I'm done with this subject.
@Laurel Oh, but this site is full of Wordle and all kinds of stuff that is completely unrelated to ELU but that's ok? But a grammar point is not? Is there some rule that says we can't discuss grammar here? That grammar can only go on the main site? Go ahead and vote to close my chat messages. Delete them, if you like. What an upside down place.
Not mad at you, alphabet. Slightly annoyed by the joke because of the "trauma" I have had due to the staff or whoever on the complaint forms, who repeat to me what mods have already said and use double-speak to get rid of a perfectly legitimate complaint I had in their regard.
@Mitch Thanks for the reassurance, Mitch. I wrote in a comment that young people today are often poor writers and the mods thought I was referring to the people on the site when it was pretty obvious I was referring to the writers of the text they were asking about....
@Lambie I want to do better than that. I value clear communication, so if there was a serious problem, you would definitely know it (and it probably wouldn't be in chat, especially not with various emoji)
@Laurel Well, too bad it wasn't you reviewing what I said where mods quoted to me the Code of Conduct rule re hostility. There was nothing hostile at all in my comments and they cited them out of context. For some reason, those people on that site (don't dare mention which one)seem to be out to get me. And they did.
If you complain via a complaint form and all those "handlers" do is quote back to you what mods have already said, what's the point? What a joke. Really. Also, a closed loop, logically speaking.
Oh, and then, after the powers that be respond to a complaint, they refuse to discuss anything furrrther and close your ticket and tell you they will not deal with the issue again even if you make another complaint. This, in my book, is what the Spaniards call fascistoide. Not exactly fascist, but fascist-like.
@Lambie I mean, if I had my way, I think it would be a good idea for both you and those mods to try to have a fresh start. Like, put all that (probably mutual) frustration behind you and try to not get to the point where anyone needs to be talking to CMs. I'm sure there will be future problems you'll encounter (as one always does in any social situation) but it would be healthier to work through them when you don't see each other as opponents
:64413294, They have suspended me twice for a year. I feel they are unfair and am thinking of just deleting that particular account. There is no way around it. I frankly think there is an anti-American bias in this case.
The company post-2018 treats CMs like oh-not-so-necessary evil, and that's reflected in their workload and how the layoffs since have affected the CM team
@Mitch Sourcils are eyebrows and cils are eyelashes. A common expression is froncer les sourcils (to frown) but lever les sourcils is not very used. If you want to express surprise, you can say ouvrir grand les yeux or ouvrir de grands yeux. That would be close to 'raise eyebrows'.
@alphabet I'll be honest. I don't even know if pirating is illegal here. I mean, surely a lot of things that can be pirated are extremely haram (even music), but beyond that
@user726941 an eye for an eye will make eye doctors a lot of money
@Lambie to be frank, you're sometimes too frank for comfort
@M.A.R. "However these laws do not cover works from outside Iran as it is not a signatory to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works or the WIPO Copyright Treaty, or a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO)" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_in_Iran