English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

M.A.R.

00:07

@alphabet what about /b/?

Cramberry. Imbound. Canbrian.

jlliagre

00:25

Blossom Puzzle, December 14
Letters: A I L T N O Y
My score: 122 points
My longest word: 7 letters
🌷 🌹 🌻 🌺 💮 💐 🌼
Peut mieux faire...
https://www.merriam-webster.com/games/blossom-word-game/

CowperKettle

@M.A.R. But Alexander is no longer here, while Muslims are

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle I doubt they resemble sultans much anymore

Laurel

00:59

0

A: Replacing our "research" close reason

I created What resources do I need to consult before asking a question? and while that might not be the final revision of that post, I think it's good enough to move forward with the rest of this. Without further ado (sorry, there's been a lot of ado to get to this point), I copied Cat's suggesti...

2

I've procrastinated but it's here!

alphabet

@M.A.R. That also happens (again, for some speakers), though there the result of assimilation is labial [m] rather than labiodental [ɱ]

@Laurel Great!

Laurel

I can't help but feel like I spent too much time before posting, but not enough time actually making the post (tho this might just be a personal problem lol)

alphabet

There's this whole broad phenomenon of assimilation to following labial and labiodental consonants. Many speakers also don't pronounce the /d/ in bad boy (or rather merge it into the following [b]).

I just realized that I pronounce offend boys like a femboy's. An interesting case of alveolar plosive elision (deleting the /d/ in offend) followed by labialization (turning the remaining /n/ in offend and the /m/ in femboy into [ɱ]).

This would make a good standup bit ("Are you going to offend boys?")

(Though I suppose there is a slight difference in prosody; the two aren't exactly identical in all contexts.)

(Sorry, I meant turning them into [m].)

Laurel

01:27

@alphabet I find this hilarious tho I think a bit about labiodentals would have a limited audience

alphabet

@Laurel Am I the only one who pronounces these two phrases identically, except for a slight difference in stress patterns?

Laurel

I'm pretty sure I pronounce offend with an N sound at the end

@alphabet Has this problem ever happened to you in real life???

alphabet

@Laurel I don't think they usually occur in the same contexts.

I mean, I (like some AmE speakers) pronounce metal and medal as homophones, and I don't think I've ever confused anyone thereby.

Laurel

@alphabet How many times a week do you hear or speak the word femboy, on average?

alphabet

@Laurel Not enough to run into this problem.

CowperKettle

01:36

@M.A.R. Yes, but there are radicals who want to "islamise" the world.

I once chatted with an Egyptian who told me that Islam was more ancient than Christianity, and Christianity was a deviation, and people should understand this, and correct themselves by finally joining Islam

alphabet

@CowperKettle I think that that's just standard Islamic doctrine, no?

Tahrif

Taḥrīf (Arabic: تحريف, transl. 'distortion') is an Arabic-language term used by Sunni and Shia Muslims to refer to believed alterations made to the previous revelations of God—specifically those that make up the Tawrat (or Torah), the Zabur (or Psalms) and the Injil (or Gospel). It is also used to refer to what Muslims consider to be the corrupted Jewish and Christian interpretations of the previous revelations of God, known as “Tahrif al-Mana”. This concept holds that the previous revelations of God have been misinterpreted. == Origin == The origins of Tahrif are debated. Muqatil ibn Sulayman...

@M.A.R. There is a difference in how they're perceived. Jews in Europe aren't accused of trying to convert people to Judaism. Meanwhile in India...

Laurel

I can't follow any of this. I don't think I even really understand the religious fighting/bigotry that happens in the US, despite living here

Dannyu NDos

01:52

And here in South Korea, Christianity and Buddhism coexist. Though, there always are fanatics.

Cerberus

@Laurel If we're not going to use this closing-reason for basic questions about grammar, then I think this looks fine.

@DannyuNDos Is the proportion of Christians increasing?

How about young people, how religious are they? And of which religion?

@alphabet Yeah I would say Judaism normally isn't about evangelising at all. That is because the religion is tied to ethnicity: you can't normally become Jewish.

Dannyu NDos

@Cerberus Decreasing, actually. Atheism has always been the majority here, and young people tend to cease being religious.

Cerberus

@DannyuNDos Makes sense.

Thanks.

jlliagre

@DannyuNDos Gosh, Atheists tend to cease being religious too ;-)

Dannyu NDos

And those "young people" include me. 'Cause I was tired of my church promoting pseudo-sciences.

Laurel

02:02

@Cerberus Only if the answer is in the dictionary, which very few are

Dannyu NDos

1

Q: I'm a new polytheist. What does it mean for me to believe in a god?

Please pardon me about that I'm concealing my religious background to prevent a flame-war. Though I've never lost my faith, the faith has been changing for recent times. For now, I seem to be believing in multiple gods. Infinitely many, in fact. An apeirotheist if I were to coin a term. Who are t...

Cerberus

@Laurel Yeah.

Dannyu NDos

Heck, I'd rather believe in gods whom people don't call.

CowperKettle

This summer when I was hospitalized in an endocrinology ward, my bunky was an Azerbaijani man. I installed an Islamic app and helped him orient himself towards Mecca, so that he could pray properly. :)

My rich relatives had a guy from Tajikistan who tended their garden and fixed things in the house. He started reading deeply into Quran and stuff, and started trying to bring them over to Islam. :)

He had an institute degree in Tajikistan, but that country is ruled by a post-Soviet corrupt family clan, and they siphon money to Europe instead of developing Tajikistan, and thus literally hundreds of thousands if not millions of their citizens are working and living abroad.

Potentially, Tajikistan could be swimming in money. The rivers alone have enough energy to feed neighboring countries, but nothing is being developed.

It saw industrial development under the USSR, but after the fall of the USSR, Russians fled, fearing reprisals from nationalists.

My dad did some water prospecting/geological mapping there as a geology student in the late 1960s

The policy was to try to develop the Central Asian republics, bring in engineers, but install only local nationalities as local authorities, to avoid hostility.

Xanne

02:24

Blossom Puzzle, December 15
Letters: G I N O P S T
My score: 221 points
My longest word: 8 letters
🌼 🌸 🏵 💐 🌹 🌺 🌻 💮

Laurel

@DannyuNDos Sounds kinda like you're in the transition period between an established religion and pure agnosticism/atheism

CowperKettle

Word of the morn: biased agonists (We also demonstrate that β-arrestin-biased 5-HT2A receptor agonists block psychedelic effects and induce receptor downregulation and tachyphylaxis.)

@DannyuNDos Do you like K-Pop?

I had a couple of friends who loved a South Korean game show, I don't recall its name, but it was kind of silly.

Probably "Running Man"

I watched with them, but could not understand anything, and only pretended to have fun.

This one must be interesting:

Trans-Siberian Pathfinders

Trans-Siberian Pathfinders (Korean: 시베리아 선발대) is a South Korean variety show. The show broadcast from September 26 to November 21, 2019 on Thursday 11 pm (KST). == Synopsis == Five actors, who are good friends, take the Trans-Siberian Railway train to travel from Vladivostok to Moscow, Russia. The train will pass through a total of 126 stations including Khabarovsk, Belogorsk, Skovorodino, Mariinsk, Chernyshevsk, Ulan-Ude, Omsk, Tyumen, Balezino and Kirov. == Airtime == == Cast == == List of episode and ratings == In this table, the blue numbers represent the lowest ratings and the ...

Dannyu NDos

@CowperKettle Only if it's from certain artists. Ever heard of Norazo?

[M/V] NORAZO(노라조) - SHOWER(샤워)

►

jlliagre

02:41

Blossom Puzzle, December 15
Letters: G I N O P S T
My score: 207 points
My longest word: 8 letters
🏵 🌺 💐 🌸 🌼 🌻 🌹 💮
Better!

Dannyu NDos

@Laurel I acknowledge that that's a common impression about me, but I claim I'm nothing like in "transition period". I actually aim to build a new religion that is consistent with science and its philosophy.

CowperKettle

@DannyuNDos No. I'll check it out!

alphabet

Have you considered joining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints?

Now that they're out of dead people, they've started baptizing raccoons.

CowperKettle

I've joust found a North Korean comedy TV show which has been running since the 1970s

화술소품무대 《만복의 폭포》

►

But I don't understand anything, of course.

Dannyu NDos

@alphabet They're inconsistent to history, so no.

alphabet

02:47

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life North Korean Edition

►

@DannyuNDos Just take those concerns and turn them off

Laurel

03:08

@DannyuNDos You'll end up believing what you want; none of it really matters to me as long as you're not being a menace to society lol (that's true of everyone). My comment about it being perhaps a transitional state is based on my personal experience. I was raised religious (Catholic), then became a sort of deist, then decided that I didn't actually need a god in my worldview and became a pure atheist

alphabet

03:26

tchrist

1

Q: Is the noun phrase modifying the prepositional phrase?

The line stretched all the way around the corner. Is the NP "all the way" modifying the PP "around the corner"? Thank you.

grammar

Laurel

@alphabet It looks like you're having a good friday night at least

jlliagre

Please do not feed the racoons... ;-)

tchrist

@alphabet Or pro- vs anti-Tictockery. Or the great dry gulf between the Atlantickers and the Pacifickers. Or a similarly grand span between respective formative educations. Or just plain birth-millennia.

Town versus Gown.

Class warfare.

Medication failures.

Cerberus

03:48

@tchrist What gown?

Have you recovered from your illness yet?

tchrist

@Cerberus I think mostly. Still a more sensitive stomach that I'm used to having.

Town and gown

Town and gown are two distinct communities of a university town; 'town' being the non-academic population and 'gown' metonymically being the university community, especially in ancient seats of learning such as Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, and St Andrews, although the term is also used to describe modern university towns as well as towns with a significant public school. The metaphor is historical in its connotation but continues to be used in the literature on urban higher education and in common parlance. == Origin of the term == During the Middle Ages, students admitted to European universities...

Cerberus

Hmm I hope the process of recovery will continue and reach completion.

@tchrist Ahh that gown.

tchrist

Not being able to drink milk was awful.

Cerberus

You can drink it again?

tchrist

Yes.

I haven't pigged out, but yes.

I sometimes need it, because coffee can still be too harsh when unbuffered.

Cerberus

03:51

Hmm.

tchrist

2:1 coffee to milk isn't something I've ever had to put up with, nor any, but coffee on an empty stomach was too much for me all this week.

Cerberus

Yeah I would hate to have my tea milkless.

You need the coffee?

tchrist

Well.

The headaches were infernal.

Withdrawal headaches.

Cerberus

Oh, I see.

tchrist

I did drink tea for several days, but it wasn't as much kick. And I still needed a spot of milk.

Cerberus

03:54

I drink tea sans caffeine.

tchrist

During the troubles, I couldn't even keep that down.

I certainly did try.

Cerberus

Quite troublesome.

tchrist

There was a little mini epidemic of this malaise here.

Cerberus

Ohh.

I think you mentioned some germ.

tchrist

The emergency department was full of it for a couple weeks.

Cerberus

03:58

Poor people.

Vikas

04:23

@Mitch I think some of hate or racism against Muslims is because of this history. Modern day hate or racism or a mindset that Muslims are not as good as other religions' people is also because of ignorance. But I would also point out that there are good people too who don't create any issues related to any religion.

It all comes down to education.

tchrist

In some societies, walking around with one's religion publicly dangling out from one's person for all the world to see is just as unsightly and unwelcome as walking around wearing leather chaps and nothing else. In other societies, it's the other way around.

Cerberus

04:43

Indeed.

tchrist

Funny how nobody ever shows up here asking for our help in saying something nice about somebody else. Instead it's always about saying horrible things about something we disapprove of, even though doing this has never required fancy words to sting the worst.

Cerberus

05:06

Hmm who are these people?

When are we asked for help in saying someone bad?

tchrist

Single-word-requests for a person who blahs.

Blah is always something bad.

alphabet

@tchrist I can't even imagine.

@tchrist I suggest energy drinks.

tchrist

@alphabet no no no no no no I don't drink junkpop

Plus jamais quoi encore

@jlliagre Bah, maybe the person used some automatic translation. It wasn't so hard here but there are cases with more esoteric words where you just can't tell for sure how to group those words.

tchrist

When your stomach doesn't feel good, you don't go pouring it full of some failed chemistry experiment.

Plus jamais quoi encore

05:14

@jlliagre I mean what would be a "manual tank" anyway.

alphabet

@tchrist I assure you the experiments were quite successful.

Plus jamais quoi encore

The native speakers always seem to get it yet they can rarely explain it because most of them are not trained to do so. Anyways. @jlliagre

alphabet

Much better than diluting your milk with coffee.

tchrist

Hem
Lock

Cerberus

@tchrist Ah, OK.

tchrist

05:18

giuliani -= $148000000.00

alphabet

Wasn't he already pretty much broke?

tchrist

Quite.

Plus jamais quoi encore

I made quite a few complaints to quite a few bars about guys like him, including him.

CowperKettle

Plus jamais quoi encore

I'll file complaints to professional corporations about any professional with a high profile who tramples their code of conduct.

tchrist

05:22

@alphabet It's a terrible thing to leave to your heirs, isn't it, a negative fortune that will last for generations? Imagine committing your grandchildren and their grandchildren to abject poverty!

Plus jamais quoi encore

Someone will appeal it and it will be scaled down.

tchrist

@Plusjamaisquoiencore So you're saying you're a conduct code corporation profession trampler complaint filter?

alphabet

@tchrist He can always bequeath his negative fortune to Mike Pence.

tchrist

To the man with pennies to his name, you mean?

Micky Pennies.

Plus jamais quoi encore

Yes, I'm very adamant about these. I know it's a handful of forgetful classes at the end of a curriculum, but still.

If you're part of the licensed professions, you should abide.

tchrist

05:26

Wait for what?

Dude abides

►

alphabet

The courts will force Rudy to auction off all the souvenirs he looted from Ground Zero. (He definitely did that, right?)

And the industrial-size bottles of food coloring he uses as hair dye.

Plus jamais quoi encore

Most likely I made a mess out of the language again. Can't I say abide there?

Comply I guess.

alphabet

And his unpublished manuscript about the advantages of cousin marriage.

tchrist

@Plusjamaisquoiencore Well, it can mean to submit to, but that isn't the sense that first sprang to mind.

alphabet

And his illegal ferret collection.

Plus jamais quoi encore

05:30

Heard. Act in accordance with. Anyways, take it seriously is what I mean.

alphabet

Plus his stash of 10,000 copies of TIME Magazine with his face on the cover.

tchrist

@alphabet His second cousin. And what's wrong with cousin marriage?

alphabet

@tchrist Nothing's wrong with it, as Giuliani's unpublished manuscript persuasively argues.

Plus jamais quoi encore

How low so many folks like him have sunk to. A long time ago I thought he was respectable.

alphabet

In any future trials, I expect he'll be declared too drunk to represent himself.

@Plusjamaisquoiencore He was always like that.

This is nothing new from him.

Plus jamais quoi encore

05:35

I don't share many of this views, but that recent trend in American politics, that's the pits.

Outright lying and trying to interfere with the elections process, that's unconscionable.

I never thought I'd see something like that in the U.S.

tchrist

@alphabet Don't swallow the FUD.

By the time you hit second cousins, offspring from those unions have barely if any greater incidence of birth defects than the general population. And there is data that second and third cousins may even be less prone to that than the offspring of two nonconsanguineous parents are.

alphabet

@tchrist Everyone knows cousin marriage is wrong. That's why you should only have kids with your cousins out of wedlock.

Plus jamais quoi encore

It think it's mostly cultural. The issue is really just when this happens with small groups doing it for a prolonged period of time.

alphabet

Spend the family reunion debating custody and child support.

tchrist

Another study showed a certain incidence of 15/1000 from unrelated parents going to 36/1000 in first-cousin parents. That's still not much.

@Plusjamaisquoiencore Indeed.

I've just come back from visiting with a friend whose parents are first cousins.

Like, a couple hours ago.

She's a perfectly lovely person.

So are her parents. I've met them.

alphabet

05:47

I always want to know how those relationships started. How does one go about flirting with one's cousin? It could end quite badly if the feelings weren't reciprocated.

tchrist

I grew up with a couple of dozen first cousins, and maybe a hundred second cousins.

If you don't think nothing frisky ever happened between any of those people when they were teenagers, then you were never a teenager.

Cerberus

Wow.

Plus jamais quoi encore

Some older cousins of mine played with me and were nice to me when I was a child so I fantasized about them.

alphabet

@tchrist That is...a lot.

Cerberus

I had four cousins and two cousines.

alphabet

05:51

@tchrist Wait, what?!

Are you sure your family wasn't one of those incest cults?

Cerberus

I can't imagine what it must be like, with so many.

alphabet

No, I would in fact not think that anything frisky had happened between those people.

tchrist

None of us are related to each other more than once.

Cerberus

Are you sure?

tchrist

Yes, actually.

Hm.

alphabet

05:52

@tchrist Sorry, but this comment absolutely mystifies me. Like, what? What?

Where did you grow up, where that was something one would just expect to happen?

tchrist

It's not my place to tell others' stories.

@alphabet It's not that you expect it. It's that it hardly surprises you.

alphabet

Ah, yes, just teens being teens,....doing it with their cousins. You know, totally typical teenage stuff, we all did it back in the day. Duh.

tchrist

I have a friend who as a teenager slept with both of his stepsisters. I thought that was weird.

alphabet

@tchrist ...why would it not surprise you?!

tchrist

How large is your own cousin set?

alphabet

05:55

@tchrist Did he end up on one of those Chris Hansen shows?

tchrist

@alphabet No idea what that means.

alphabet

@tchrist Seven, and none of them live in the area. But even if I had more, and even if they lived closer, I would be extremely surprised if any of them hooked up with each other.

To Catch a Predator

To Catch a Predator is an American reality television series in the television news magazine program Dateline NBC featuring confrontations with host Chris Hansen, partly filmed with a hidden camera, of adult men arriving at a sting house to have sex with a minor and typically being arrested as a result. The minors are adults impersonating underage persons (generally ages 12 or 13) in online chats.The series premiered in November 2004. It followed twelve undercover sting operations as they were conducted across the United States with the watchdog group Perverted-Justice. Following the third ...

tchrist

My dad's paternal grandparents have something like 500 descendants.

It's almost like that on the other side with my mom's maternal grandparents.

So down to third cousins, and pretending it's flat not a tree, that would be a thousand people. Who's going to check IDs, you know?

Cerberus

My great-great-grandfather has about 150 descendants, I think. But no thanks to my great-grandfather! Our branch is tiny.

tchrist

One of my cousin's cousins from his other side fell in with his own second cousin, for example.

BUT THEY DID NOT KNOW THIS!

alphabet

05:59

@tchrist In your case, was it first or second cousins that were getting frisky? I assumed the former. The latter is somewhat less weird. Still weird.

Cerberus

Yeah and there will also be a confluence of DNA from more remote relatives that matches the DNA of some other person partially.

Plus jamais quoi encore

Proximity will breed promiscuity. Anyways most of the time people end up forming couple just because of some proximity and someone being in their environment.

tchrist

@Plusjamaisquoiencore It's simply that.

alphabet

I'm just mystified that you grew up in a family where that was normalized and considered unsurprising.

tchrist

The parents never learned of this.

Cerberus

06:01

'Normalised'.

Didn't sound like that to me.

tchrist

More like boarding school or summer camp shennanigans.

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle heh, they had a couple of things confused there. Yes, Quran says Jews and Christians lost their way, and that Islam really is a return to Abraham's own religion, which is why it's "older". Of course the version with all the prayers comes later.

alphabet

11 mins ago, by tchrist

If you don't think nothing frisky ever happened between any of those people when they were teenagers, then you were never a teenager.

...I was, in fact a teenager, and I would be extremely surprised if any first cousins in our family got up to "shenanigans."

tchrist

At the last family reunion, I sat there talking for some while with one of my dad's high school sweethearts before it occurred to me to ask WHY she was there.

alphabet

Your acceptance of this I find genuinely shocking.

tchrist

06:03

She had, of course, simply moved on and married another cousin.

alphabet

I thought it was just an Alabama thing.

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle Again, doesn't seem like an image a bunch of poor widows in a village in Central India would inspire. Yes, Western Europeans aren't living alongside huge communities of Muslims, so a bunch of radicals spouting an alien language stand out way more

tchrist

I also have first cousins who are the result of a Levirate marriage, so they are actually three-quarter brothers themselves.

All these things happen.

alphabet

@tchrist Ick. Just...ick.

@tchrist Again, what kind of family did you grow up in?!

tchrist

What the hell are you thinking is wrong with those two cases? Those are utterly normal.

alphabet

06:06

@tchrist Normal in your family, I guess. Are you sure it wasn't a cult?

Cerberus

@M.A.R. What is huge?

M.A.R.

@DannyuNDos you tell me. When it comes to gods these days I'm only in it for the cool quotes

tchrist

A woman is dating a couple brothers off and on. She eventually marries one of them and they have a son. But then husband dies tragically. His brother ends up marrying his brother's widow, and they too end up having a son. THERE IS NOTHING INCESTUOUS HERE YOU PERV!

alphabet

@tchrist Not genetically incestuous. No birth defects. But still...gross. Yuck.

tchrist

And for one woman to be dating two different male cousins sequentially, how dare you say there's anything wrong with that?

alphabet

06:08

"Technically not incestuous" is a low bar.

> An estimated 0.2 percent of marriages in the United States are between individuals who are second cousins or closer — that means there are about 250,000 people in America in those relationships.

M.A.R.

@Cerberus well a Hindu would know that people from the village on the other side of the river are Muslims. If this brews some animosity it's of a different kind than having middle Eastern terrorists on your back door

alphabet

The percentage in your family seems higher than that.

tchrist

Don't be a squicky freak.

alphabet

I don't know anyone who's in such a marriage and I would be extremely surprised if someone told me they were.

Yuck.

Yuck yuck yuck.

tchrist

You know, that's it. Good bye. Fuck you.

alphabet

06:10

Your family clearly has very different norms than mine, is all I can say.

M.A.R.

Ooookay. The court will take a recess.

Cerberus

@M.A.R. On your back door?

We have large Muslim populations in Western Europe.

The terrorists are I think mostly foreign born.

M.A.R.

@Cerberus sure but they're always a small minority in their own communities, so it's more like a bunch of nice hippies with beards that donate a lot and have their own special place and talk funny, no?

alphabet

I mean, not that my family has had a formal conversation about how "we do not marry our cousins here." But we didn't need to, because...that should be fairly obvious.

M.A.R.

@alphabet I think you should maybe stop.

Go drink some milk

alphabet

06:14

@M.A.R. Fine, fine.

Cerberus

@M.A.R. Do you really think that is how most Western Europeans think about the Muslims in their cities?

@tchrist I think the occasional child born of two cousins is no big deal, as long as it doesn't happen often within a fairly small community.

Then you get an accretion of identical genes or something.

M.A.R.

@Cerberus I mean how else? It's just so incongruous with the rest of modern life. Unless they're "Muslims" like me, in which case they wouldn't be even all that inclined to share their religion

Cerberus

@M.A.R. Well, surely you know that there is a ton of Islamophobia here?

For many reasons.

I could list some, but it's not pretty.

Plus jamais quoi encore

Islamophobia and antisemitism are a growing plague.

Cerberus

I'm not sure whether either is really growing here.

They are just here.

It is mainly Muslims who are antisemites here.

M.A.R.

06:21

@Cerberus well which group are we talking about? I was initially referring to the western Europeans that do not interact with (reasonable) Muslims on a daily basis, so about the Islamophobia, yeah.

Cerberus

@M.A.R. Maybe I misunderstood you?

Europeans who don't interact with Muslims, that's very different from those who don't interact with reasonable Muslims?

M.A.R.

If, OTOH, you poke around a bit, Hindus in India don't seem to share the same fears, their animosity stems from some other source.

Cerberus

Here the perceived issues are both very local, more like statistics.

Two different but related issues.

M.A.R.

For one, some seem to justify it with some sort of 'racial suicide' theory Cowp linked a couple of days ago. They're saying Muslims will breed a lot and eventually displace Hindus? Something like that

Plus jamais quoi encore

@Cerberus I don't buy something like that really. When there is islamophobia, there is antisemitism not far away imho.

Cerberus

06:24

@M.A.R. Oh, yes, there is that. It's mainly far-right conspiracy theories, and those are about immigration in general, not Muslims in particular.

M.A.R.

There's also the issue of Hindu religious texts, which like any good religious text, talk a fair bit about purging the infidels and stuff.

Cerberus

@Plusjamaisquoiencore Well, there is some anti-Semitism in the far right, yes. But Islamophobia, or perhaps I should say, a lack of appreciation for Muslims, is widespread.

Whereas a lack of appreciation for Jews is not.

Plus jamais quoi encore

There are not as many people of the Jewish confession explains it imho.

Cerberus

Only for those who strongly support Israel, perhaps.

@Plusjamaisquoiencore That is part of it; the other part is that the specific problems people have with Muslims in Europe hardly apply to European Jews.

Plus jamais quoi encore

If people don't care about solving wars and economy all over, then there is immigration and then if you exclude people and they integrate less, then it clashes I would think.

There will be more migrations. There is no stopping this.

For decades neighboring countries to war zones have had to welcome those migrants while we did nothing.

Now they overflow.

Cerberus

06:31

It is true that vilifying Muslims over certain behaviour will only make them angry and/or apathetic, and thus make them behave worse.

@Plusjamaisquoiencore Immigration could physically be stopped.

But Europeans are not prepared to take such drastic measures.

Plus jamais quoi encore

We have duties.

At law.

We failed. Because of privilege.

We are parties to covenants.

No barrier will stop what is coming, with climate to top it off. People should get used to it.

Cerberus

The far right would change those laws.

Plus jamais quoi encore

Not jus cogens or customary obligatory law.

Cerberus

Barriers could be built. Are built.

Plus jamais quoi encore

Sure. Humans always find a way to survive and outdo this when they have nothing to lose.

Cerberus

06:36

I don't know: once Europe cancels certain treaties obliging countries to offer asylum to refugees, then I don't see why immigration couldn't be stopped mostly.

And that is what the far right want.

The centre still wants to take in refugees.

Plus jamais quoi encore

They can try.

Cerberus

Imagine if Hitler ruled over a continent.

He could just kill anyone who would approach the borders.

Luckily, such a thing will not happen.

But imagine if Trump ruled over Europe.

I don't know what he would do.

But he could make push-backs standard and build barriers on all land borders.

Forbid rescue ships.

Deport immigrants to other countries by force.

I don't see how a substantial number of immigrants could succeed under those circumstances.

Plus jamais quoi encore

If the rule of law becomes a gimmick or just a tool for only a small group, a society will implode. From within. Oh, well, what is coming is like nothing we have seen. There are not enough weapons to kill them all and not enough bricks to build a wall high enoug.

Time will tell.

Cerberus

Why would you think no such wall could be built?

Europe already has barriers along large parts of its borders.

Pushing back most ships an deporting any who slip through is not that expensive.

Plus jamais quoi encore

Maybe.

Cerberus

06:42

It is our laws that prevent this, not physical capabilities.

M.A.R.

@Plusjamaisquoiencore you're talking about your viewpoint, which is reasonable. We were originally talking about unreasonable viewpoints and what exacerbates them.

Cerberus

I have no idea how far various political parties would go in practice.

M.A.R.

Jews didn't cause international incidents by blowing up innocents

Cerberus

Trump didn't even build most of his wall, did he?

M.A.R.

How much of it did he build?

Plus jamais quoi encore

06:43

Oh, I was not privy to the whole conversation. I have strong opinions about this.

M.A.R.

I think everyone got sidetracked because of Covid

Otherwise his pet project for his final year in office would certainly have been finishing up that wall

Cerberus

@M.A.R. Well, Jews in Israel have.

But not in Europe.

alphabet

@M.A.R. Not that I really want to refute this point, but have you been reading the news recently?

Cerberus

@M.A.R. Hmm I think it was already too late by then, because his party had lots its majority in parliament?

M.A.R.

I think Charlie Hebdo was closer to most French people than Palestine.

Cerberus

06:45

Closer, as in it caused more of an outrage?

It was a sudden event.

M.A.R.

And incidents in Europe continue to be disproportionately covered in media all over the world

Cerberus

Outrage over Palestine has been present in France over many decades.

M.A.R.

Just like that controversy at the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine special military war

Cerberus

So it is more like a stew on a low fire.

Very special.

M.A.R.

Can't help care more about events that happen closer to you

alphabet

06:47

@M.A.R. Mostly he just replaced relatively insecure and small barriers with a much taller and more imposing "wall" made of steel columns. Very little of his wall covers area that didn't already have some sort of fence in place.

Cerberus

At any rate, about Palestine: I think people in country X will normally care a lot less about things that happen outside their own country than within. And less about a different continent than about the same continent. Etc.

alphabet

Trump ended up funding his wall by declaring a "national emergency" and using presidential emergency powers to redirect money to it, since Congress had too many Democrats to actually pass a bill funding it.

M.A.R.

FWIW I don't think I'm any closer geographically to Palestine than . . . Italians maybe? So it's purely about media exposure at that point, even though I try to keep mine to a minimum

@Cerberus exactly

Cerberus

@M.A.R. Oh, I think there are many factors.

Physical proximity is only one factor.

Media attention is another, as you say.

Then there is cultural similarity.

And then there are the particulars of the event.

For example, Ukraine is a stable, functioning state: Sudan is not.

Gaza is a unified territory attacked from outside: Yemen is a country in a civil war / revolution from within.

alphabet

Much of the debate in the US comes from the close political and military relationship between the US and Israel; people have...sharply divided opinions about whether that relationship should be stronger or weaker.

Of course, in Yemen the US is also funding one side, which is also committing various atrocities. But that isn't a topic of major political dispute.

And, unlike Israel-Palestine, the conflict in Yemen is seen as having fairly few geopolitical effects outside of Yemen itself.

Cerberus

06:57

There is also that; but I think it affects government policy more than public opinion.

alphabet

It does affect the amount of attention devoted to the issue.

If everyone in the US knew about and paid close attention to the conflict in Yemen, it might prove equally polarizing.

I mean, I'm only vaguely aware of what's happening there.

Cerberus

What kinds of effects do you mean, then?

alphabet

There's a perception, at least, that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (and the US's involvement in it) has contributed a great deal to broader tensions in the region and created endless obstacles to American interests.

I don't think that an end to the war in Yemen would have major effects on the political situation in other countries or the relationships between them. A solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might. Or at least people think that it might.

Cerberus

Perhaps so.

alphabet

Also: I don't think the US support to Yemen is anywhere near the scale of its support to Israel over the years.

Cerberus

07:07

To Yemen...

To Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, rather.

alphabet

The US is supporting the "Republic of Yemen," which is backed by Saudi Arabia. I don't know whether US aid goes to Saudi Arabia or to some sort of Yemeni government directly. Probably both.

Cerberus

Mainly to the countries above.

The rump government is pretty powerless.

Vikas

08:25

#Worldle #694 1/6 (100%)
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Xanne

Wordle 910 4/6

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Cerberus

@Vikas Well done.

#Worldle #694 2/6 (100%)
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jlliagre

09:00

Wordle 910 4/6

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Vikas

Wordle 910 5/6

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CowperKettle

10:48

It's minus 14°C. So warm and nice.

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle OMG stay hydrated

CowperKettle

11:44

@M.A.R. I've drank 1.5 liters of kefir

> Welke kleine beestjes stellen heel veel vragen?
Vraagteken

M.A.R.

@alphabet That's . . . ironic? Do they chop journalists to bits in the Republic of Yemen?

Vikas

12:31

@Cerberus I have memorized this portion of map by keyword "ELL".

CowperKettle

BN-800 reactor

The BN-800 reactor (Russian: реактор БН–800) is a sodium-cooled fast breeder reactor, built at the Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Station, in Zarechny, Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia. The reactor is designed to generate 880 MW of electrical power. The plant was considered part of the weapons-grade Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement signed between the United States and Russia, with the reactor being part of the final step for a plutonium-burner core (a core designed to burn and, in the process, destroy, and recover energy from, plutonium) The plant reached its full power production in August...

A unique reactor, cooled by sodium, which has a boiling temp of over 800°C

Which means it's less likely to blow up.

It has a difference of some 300 degrees between the hottest working condition of the sodium and the boiling temperature, while in a water reactor, there's always a thin margin - only 100 degrees even between ice-cold water and steam.

So the operating system is much more likely to spot a rapid overheat and shut it down.

Vikas

12:59

Do you guys get overwhelmed while managing your data? When I don't organize my personal files, documents, photos, projects etc., everything looks messed up. So I have to organize them every few months. Every time I think I've created a better directory and organization of files and I will follow rules created by me. But in the end, it gets messed up eventually.

Another issue is if you don't delete useless stuff from time to time, it becomes hard later to identify what things are needed and what is not needed. Makes management even more difficult.

CowperKettle

13:18

@Vikas I haven't been able to concentrate for the last three years, so all my data is in disarray. There are some computer hardware just lying in my room, which I should throw out or give away, and I cannot focus on doing it.

Ever since my antidepressants stopped working.

I'm feeling a bit better after adding methylfolate to my regimen, but not better enough to declutter the room.

Vikas

@CowperKettle I lose concentration while managing it because it feels tedious and too much. So I do it in multiple sessions.

CowperKettle

I start doing something, like translating, but my brain gets tired after a single sentence or half sentence, and I just sit and do nothing.

I felt normal from 2011, when I started on insulin, and up to the late 2020, when my antidepressant, which was prescribed in 2018, stopped working.

So I had some 8 years of relatively normal life, in total.

CowperKettle

14:16

> Dr. McCorvy would like to see industry build on this research by developing and testing new potential psychedelic treatments without the hallucinogenic trip.

"My vision is to get some of these compounds properly vetted in trials and out to clinics in my lifetime," Dr. McCorvy says.

Does he mean that he wants personally to push the compounds through vetting? Or is it just his desire to see them vetted, even if by someone else?

It feels ambiguous when the previous sentence is taken into account.

Lambie

15:33

He wants the industry to do it. industry [researchers, etc.] "to get something done by someone".

Robusto

15:57

Weekly Quordle Challenge 25
3️⃣7️⃣
4️⃣5️⃣
m-w.com/games/quordle/

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