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CowperKettle
CowperKettle
00:43
@tchrist Yes, Yekaterinoslav is now called Dnipro:
Dnipro
Dnipro, formerly Dnipropetrovsk (1926–2016), is Ukraine's fourth-largest city, with about one million inhabitants. It is located in the eastern part of Ukraine, 391 km (243 mi) southeast of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on the Dnieper River, after which its Ukrainian language name is derived. Dnipro is the administrative centre of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. It hosts the administration of Dnipro urban hromada. Dnipro has a population of 968,502 (2022 estimate).Archeological evidence suggests the site of the present city was settled by Cossack communities from at least 1524. Yekaterinoslav ("glory o...
> Renamed Dnipropetrovsk in 1926 after the Ukrainian Communist Party leader Grigory Petrovsky, it became a focus for the Stalinist commitment to the rapid development of heavy industry.
> According to the American Communist Fred Beal when, with Isadore Erenburg his superior in cultural-propaganda work at the prestigious Kharkov Tractor Plant, he asked Petrovsky what they were to tell their workers who were saying that "millions of peasants are dying all over Russia", Petrovsky replied:

> Tell them nothing! What they say is true. We know that million are dying. That is unfortunate, but the glorious future of the Soviet Union will justify that. Tell them nothing![8]
tchrist
tchrist
01:01
@CowperKettle Sure does does like they had fair reason to strike his name from their city.
 
2 hours later…
jlliagre
jlliagre
02:50
Triple ethical dative of the day: Je me vais te lui vous faire un petit dessin, moi!
 
2 hours later…
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
04:21
Google translates this as "I will draw you a little picture!"
SmokeDetector
SmokeDetector
05:05
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Mostly punctuation marks in answer (36): A word or expression for an older man trying to look younger‭ by Simone‭ on english.SE
alphabet
alphabet
3
Q: A word or expression for an older man trying to look younger

user66974I am looking for a word or expression for an older man, often over 60, who usually wears fashion items ( shoes, shirts, jackets), dye their hair, and do their best to keep fit. The overall result is sort of younger look which often clashes with the real age of this persons. I am not looking for ...

word-choice single-word-requests
How did anyone not suggest zaddy? I think the question may actually be older than that word.
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
user image
Word of the day: listrosaurus. It survived the mass extinction 252 mya, and represented 95% of all animals for several million years. Not species, but individuals.
Complete ecological recovery took 30 million years, so probably in the beginning these guys were total rulers of the Earth.
SmokeDetector
SmokeDetector
05:30
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Mostly punctuation marks in answer (36): A word or expression for an older man trying to look younger‭ by Simone‭ on english.SE
 
2 hours later…
Cerberus
Cerberus
07:39
@CowperKettle Including unicellular animals like amoebae?
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
07:58
@Cerberus I guess not
It was in the Wikipedia
Cerberus
Cerberus
Hmm.
Perhaps what they meant was something like 'land vertebrates'?
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
@Cerberus Yes, surely they meant that.
Because it's impossible to estimate the number of small things
I talked to a 19 yo guy who is self-studying English, and he said that if he decides to be a translator, he will reach the needed level of proficiency too late, because by that time AI will translate almost everything.
Cerberus
Cerberus
@CowperKettle Yea, there is that, too.
@CowperKettle Ouch.
It depends on what kind of translator he wants to be.
AI can't do literary translation and never will.
Nor legal.
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
We are living in a unique time. I wonder what school children think of AI.
@Cerberus Never is a loooong time :)
Cerberus
Cerberus
@CowperKettle Useful to let write their essays.
@CowperKettle Those things are kind of be definition off limits for non-humans.
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
08:11
@Cerberus No, I mean, do they think "it's no use to study for a chemist when I grow up - AI will know everything"
Cerberus
Cerberus
They can aid, though.
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
@Cerberus Why?
Cerberus
Cerberus
@CowperKettle They rarely think at all!
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
Children rarely think?
Cerberus
Cerberus
@CowperKettle Because people do not consider things produced by a machine true art?
And legal texts must be created by humans, because only humans may write laws.
@CowperKettle Indeed.
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
08:12
@Cerberus People can change their opinions..
Cerberus
Cerberus
But does that change the definition?
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
We could just name one thing "human art" and another "AI art"
Cerberus
Cerberus
Sure.
But it would not be true art.
Like...pop art.
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
Pop art is not true art?
Cerberus
Cerberus
Well, I wouldn't say it is.
It is art in the sociological sense.
Just as commercial television is 'culture'.
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
08:15
I loved TV, back in the Soviet times and in the 1990s there were numerous great programs.
Cerberus
Cerberus
Sure, but art?
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
And even today, Russia has the Kultura TV channel, it's quite good.
Cerberus
Cerberus
Good.
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
09:11
Consciousness: what it is, where it comes from — and whether machines can have it - Nature, 30 Oct 2023
 
1 hour later…
jlliagre
jlliagre
10:35
@CowperKettle Google translates drops a lot of pronouns. The meaning is actually "I'm going myself to draw him a little sketch!" although there are two "myselves", me and moi, and two extra indirect objects, te and vous. The whole sentence could literally translate to something like "Myself, I'm going to draw me thee him you-all a little sketch!" :-)
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
10:52
@jlliagre I suspected so! Google Translate is smart
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
11:06
user image
"Zionism is the weapon of Imperialism", during a parade in the USSR, 1970s
 
3 hours later…
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
14:08
> The Adventures of Dennis were popular in India, where they existed in English and Marathi translations.[1][4] One reason for their popularity was that they were more relatable when compared to English children's literature.[5] In 2016 they were for the first time translated directly from Russian into Hindi and Marathi.[1]
The Adventures of Dennis
The Adventures of Dennis (Russian: Денискины рассказы, Deniskiny rasskazy) is a collection of short stories for children written by Soviet author Viktor Dragunsky. They deal with the life of an eight-year-old boy in Moscow in the late 1950s and 1960s, modelled on the author's son. The first story was written in 1959; by 1961 a collection was published as a book. The total number of stories is about a hundred.The stories show a wide range of tone, with Dragunsky mixing the poetic, the satirical and the sentimental. A 1999 review in the New Zealand Slavonic Journal describes the stories as "beautifully...
Robusto
Robusto
14:26
@CowperKettle Now there's a balanced viewpoint.
#Worldle #653 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
⭐⭐⭐⭐
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
As a kid, I never came across such anti-Semitism, it was probably greatly reduced by the mid-1980s
I only remember anti-US propaganda, and that was not against US people but against the Evil Capitalist System that makes people suffer, so I felt pity for them.
But then Perestroika began, and US movies on video cassettes flooded in, and I no longer imagined the US as such a horrible antihuman place
Robusto
Robusto
Wordle 869 4/6

🟨⬛⬛🟨⬛
⬛⬛⬛🟩⬛
🟨🟨🟩🟩⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
@CowperKettle It can be, at times.
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
I know
Robusto
Robusto
I still prefer it to Russia.
No country is perfect, though. I don't know how one would even measure perfection.
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
14:43
Maybe the human brain is not prepared to judge whole countries. By evolution, we can only grasp smaller communities of about 100 people. Any view of a foreign country will be a great simplification, unless you spend your days buried in books about that country.
Robusto
Robusto
We know it when we find it, though. Hence the expression "Happy as a pig in shit."
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
In the 1990s I was riding on a bus, and there was a 15 yo kid from Central Asia who worked as the bus conductor, and he was singing a very stupid Russian pop song. I suddenly realized that to him, this is the Russia. We don't go around quoting Pushkin and Turgenev and Tolstoy, so this pop music is Russia for him.
We imagine ourselves to be all steeped somewhat in the Great Russian Culture, but in reality we just use simple phrases and behave just like ordinary guys anywhere.
Robusto
Robusto
Just as immigrants to the US are normally not here for Faulkner, Twain, Gershwin, Joplin, or Whomever. They hum the same pop tunes (or raps) and try to get ahead.
It's the surface of a stone that wears first.
 
3 hours later…
tchrist
tchrist
17:47
> What do you call someone who is being escorted?

1. a john
2. a prisoner
3. a taxi
4. desperate
0
Q: What do you call someone who is being escorted?

BriannaI've heard of the term escortee, but Googling it doesn't turn up any definition. If not that, then what could I use in this sentence: I escorted the girl through the school; she is a ________.

single-word-requests
alphabet
alphabet
People do occasionally use the word escort literally.
tchrist
tchrist
> The prison guards escorted the convict to his cell.
That's literal.
Maybe I should have suggested a convict instead. :)
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
18:06
@HippoSawrUs that's ELL.SE for you. Most of it anyway.
tchrist
tchrist
1
A: What is the difference between “To every action” and “For every action”?

John LawlerThe normal usage is for, not to (though to can be used in some contexts). This is just mathspeak (also logic), as the way to pronounce the Universal Quantifier ∀, pronounced as "for all" (or "for each" or "for every"), in formulas like (∀x ε A) f(x), pronounced as "For all x in A, f of x" Note ...

 
1 hour later…
alphabet
alphabet
19:15
Btw @Laurel -- is the change to the close reasons going forward?
Xanne
Xanne
20:11
@CowperKettle Human brains have grasped the concept of empire repeatedly, though, Cowp.
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
@CowperKettle why is a spider hook-nosed?
@alphabet going forward where?
@CowperKettle I'm just being too correct
-3
Q: Is capitalism on the verge of collapse?

Sus 7e7w This seems like a common claim. The importance of it is high. It can be sourced from multiple places, there are always ways capitalism is on the verge of destruction. Some common claims I would like stack exchange to address on a regular basis as new events happen: Inflation. Societal collapse ...

us-capitol-storming
Skeptics troll for your amusement
Is Newtonian mechanics on the verge of collapse?
alphabet
alphabet
20:37
@M.A.R. I mean it in the sense of "proceeding"
21
Q: Replacing our "research" close reason

LaurelBackground We have a massive problem with close votes. There's no sense in placing blame — we've been on this path since before even I joined the site, and we all thought what we were doing was best for the site. However, that doesn't change the fact that there's real damage being done. And we ne...

discussion closed-questions close-reasons research-effort
 
1 hour later…
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
22:07
@alphabet I mean it in the sense of "it's not going anywhere for now" because SE has since laid off the last few voices in the company that cared about this stuff. Well, probably not going anywhere anyway.
Dannyu NDos
Dannyu NDos
23:00
Can Korean 끝말잇기 or Japanese Shiritori work in English?
Though there are only 26 Latin alphabets used in English, I see a workaround: Instead linking by one letter, link by 2 or 3 letters.
alphabet
alphabet
Shiritori
Shiritori (しりとり; 尻取り) is a Japanese word game in which the players are required to say a word which begins with the final kana of the previous word. No distinction is made between hiragana, katakana, and kanji. "Shiritori" literally means "taking the end" or "taking the rear". == Rules == There are various optional and advanced rules, which the players must agree on before the game begins. === Standard rules === Two or more people take turns to play. Only nouns are permitted. A player who plays a word ending in the mora "N" (ん) loses the game, as no Japanese word begins with that character. Words...
With a single letter, it'd be far too easy. There are better English word games
Would Ghost work in Korean?
Ghost (game)
Ghost (also known as ghosts or endbee) is a written or spoken word game in which players take turns adding letters to a growing word fragment, trying not to be the one to complete a valid word. Each fragment must be the beginning of an actual word, and usually some minimum is set on the length of a word that counts, such as three or four letters. The player who completes a word loses the round and earns a "letter" (as in the basketball game horse), with players being eliminated when they have been given all five letters of the word "ghost". Ghost can be played by two or more players and requires...
Dannyu NDos
Dannyu NDos
Ghost would be too easy in Korean. One can always use a syllable unused in standard words.
As for English shiritori, something like doing – ingot – gotten – tennis – Israel – elder – derpy – pyramid, and so on?
alphabet
alphabet
That would probably work, though there are some easy words you could play (like bingo) which would cause the other party to immediately lose
Or bulge. There aren't any English words starting with ngo or lge that I know of.
Dannyu NDos
Dannyu NDos
You can link with 2 letters.
bingo – gossip, and bulge – Germany.
alphabet
alphabet
Even then, scald would make the other party lose; no English words start with ld. The problem is that English has a lot of consonant clusters that can only occur at the ends of syllables.
Dannyu NDos
Dannyu NDos
23:10
Yeah, strength would be such a word. :(
alphabet
alphabet
Or hulk or blunt or blimp
(I guess nth would work for blunt, but there are no words that start with mp, unless you count acronyms like MP.)
Dannyu NDos
Dannyu NDos
blunt – untrap, blimp – imperative.
alphabet
alphabet
Yeah, you'd need to allow either two-letter or three-letter matches.
Dannyu NDos
Dannyu NDos
2–5 letters seem ideal.
alphabet
alphabet
That might make it too easy.
Dannyu NDos
Dannyu NDos
23:12
:(
alphabet
alphabet
I suppose strengths would still be a problem.
No words start with ngths, gths, ths, or hs.
Dannyu NDos
Dannyu NDos
What about disallowing one-syllable words?
alphabet
alphabet
Likewise twelfths.
Wavelengths is two syllables.
Dannyu NDos
Dannyu NDos
D:
alphabet
alphabet
You could say that you need to repeat the last syllable of the word, but it's often hard to say which consonants belong in the last syllable.
There are different ways of dividing words into syllables; they aren't all consistent about which consonants (between vowels) belong in which syllables.
Then there's the question of what counts as an "English word." For Ghost you usually need to agree on a dictionary in advance to settle disputes.

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