English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Robusto

00:22

Jun 8, 2021 at 13:51, by Robusto

Take some LSD and we'll talk.

@Cerberus Without them, who would invest in product development?

Granted, there are abuses. But development can cost a lot. And if someone else were to just take all your R&D for free and just start pumping out products, how is that an incentive to do anything?

@DannyuNDos: So what do you program with Haskell?

Cerberus

@Robusto Patents are an extremely crude and draconic type of government intervention.

Yes, for some research it is good for society if the government does something to ensure it can be funded, but not by the crude instrument of patents.

The university model is much better: create public research institutions that do the research, not artificial commercial monopolies that restrict who can use the medicine.

Robusto

00:37

I'm trying to understand what you mean by crude and draconian. What would a delicate and benevolent alternative be?

Cerberus

And fund the research directly, rather than indirectly via patents.

See above.

Dannyu NDos

@Robusto Mostly for theoretical stuffs or for practicing.

Robusto

01:06

@DannyuNDos Are people using it for actual projects? I'd be curious about what kinds of things it's good for.

CowperKettle

01:16

This night is the Night of Baptism in the Orthodox calendar, so lots of people went ice-dipping

The people in the photos don't look very inspired.. e1.ru/text/religion/2024/01/18/73135838

It has turned into a kind of yet another stuff for instagramming yourself

Dannyu NDos

@Robusto Good for concise codes; so concise so that it would fry usual people's brain, especially the coder's own.

Robusto

@DannyuNDos OK, but if code gets compiled to bitecode anyway, what use is concision for its own sake? Especially if it's difficult to work with? Look what happened with APL and Lisp, etc.

Dannyu NDos

01:33

If one gets used to it, the particular kind of conciseness presented by Haskell will render rather "elegant".

Robusto

@DannyuNDos You mean things like list comprehensions, etc.? Python has a lot of that already.

Dannyu NDos

Monads; generalization of list comprehensions.

Mitch

02:05

@Robusto just watched the final show

I will say nothing

bites tongue so hard

Robusto

You can say if you liked it or not. I did.

Mitch

It was ok

Robusto

You're talking about the latest season, right?

Mitch

Yes

Robusto

Diff'rent strokes ...

Mitch

02:06

I was employing north Midwest understatement

But you don't know which direction I meant

Robusto

OIC. Well, you clearly aren't from the Midwest, because understatement ain't our strong suit.

Unless you meant that ironically.

Mitch

Is that a British thing?

I'm trying to get my stereotypes.right

Robusto

@Mitch Depends on the Brit.

Mitch

That's no fun

Stick your neck out

Make an inappropriate suggestion about people from some location

Robusto

@Mitch Heaven forfend.

Mitch

02:13

@Robusto No, you go fend yourself

Robusto

No, you fend for yourself.

Mitch

I'm on my way to fridge right now

BBIAS

It's like two steps away

I'm back

Nothing there worth the trouble

Kind of a first world problem - eating a meal and then being hungry at the table and instead of seconds you just want... something else

Not dessert

I'm talking another kind of meal, but right then

Off to search for chocolate

Vikas

@Robusto Yeah that's what I think.

Mitch

@Vikas and a pundit is a smart guy

Vikas

@Mitch That's what people think.

Mitch

02:24

@Vikas who else is there? 🙂

Robusto

@Mitch A pundit is like an influencer, only not on TikTok.

Vikas

@Mitch I don't think pundits are smarter than any other ordinary person.

Mitch

A public intellectual or a thought leader?

Robusto

@Vikas Neither are influencers.

Vikas

There are many kinds of pundits. Like a doctor.

Robusto

02:27

You mean like Dr. Oz?

Mitch

@Vikas in English, it refers to a

Robusto

Pundits are people who pretend to know things about politics that we don't.

Mitch

A smart person who tells you smart things? But is not necessarily a professor?

Vikas

@Mitch That's one of them. I have heard it from Steve Jobs.

Mitch

A maven?

Vikas

02:28

@Mitch Yeah.

Mitch

@Robusto oh on those political talk shows

@Vikas what is pandit/pundit in Hindi?

Robusto

@Mitch Yes.

Mitch

A guru could be a pundit and vice versa but not necessarily so

A maven is just an expert and doesn't have to be public about it

Robusto

When Poe started writing "The Raven"
He developed a powerful cravin'
To prove he was smart
He developed his art
So that people started calling him "maven" ...

He was a poem maven, obviously.

Wait, that rings a Bell ...

An Annabelle ...

An Anna Belly ...

alphabet

02:45

@Cerberus Universities are very poorly equipped to take on all the functions of a pharmaceutical company, which extend far beyond the sort of basic research done in this (university-run, government-funded) study.

tchrist

@Mitch Shamus?

Cerberus

@alphabet You would either create medicine-testing institutions, or you award money to companies to do the development and testing. They come up with a plan, and you reward them with money during the process, and an extra pile of money if they succeed.

Or something.

Mitch

@tchrist I think there was only one

Cerberus

There are many ways to fund the development of medicines.

Mitch

So sad

Cerberus

02:49

Patents are one of the worst ways.

tchrist

@Mitch I thought you were going to Shamus for this.

Mitch

@Robusto with her brother Jelly

@Cerberus I keep reading that as 'Parents'

Cerberus

If only!

Parent is from pario, to bring forth. Patent is from pateo, to be open.

Mitch

I mean for funding of medical innovation, parents are probably not optimal

Cerberus

You could use them as guinea pigs.

Mitch

02:54

@Cerberus I think you'd need a few more subjects

Step parents?

Cerberus

Sure.

Mitch

@tchrist I have no plans of ever stepping foot there

Cerberus

I mean, if Guinea is too far away to get real ones.

Mitch

@Cerberus like the Holy Roman Empire, Guinea pigs are neither

Cerberus

Hah!

tchrist

02:58

@Cerberus Parió is heard in vile fighting words in Spanish, nasty things about the puta madre que te parió. That's preterite.

Mitch

Preterite? I barely knew her!

tchrist

> parir: (transitive, intransitive, vulgar in some areas) to give birth
Synonym: dar a luz

It's used for animals more than for people.

Which is part of the meanness.

dle.rae.es/parir

> 1. intr. Dicho de una hembra vivípara: Expulsar naturalmente el hijo o los hijos que tiene en su vientre. A las tres de la tarde ya había parido. U. t. c. tr. Isabel ha parido una niña. La perra parió tres cachorros.

I can't believe they expect people to know what viviparous means. :)

But that's another word that traces back to the same etymon, eventually.

R.I.P Peter Schickele.

Vikas

@Mitch It's same.

Cerberus

03:21

@tchrist Ah, yes, the funny o past.

I wonder whence it came.

Does Italian have it, too?

Or only Iberian?

tchrist

Yes, Italian has it, too.

In theory it came from the perfect active, but of course you can't see that, mostly. The future of course draws on a reflex of habere added to the infinitive, as does the conditional but backshifted.

The stress suggested the same sort of thing.

IT: pènso      pensài
    pènsi      pensàsti
    pènsa      pensò
    pensiàmo   pensàmmo
    pensàte    pensàste
    pènsano    pensàrono

ES: pienso     pensé
    piensas    pensaste
    piensa     pensó
    pensamos   pensamos
    pensáis    pensasteis
    piensan    pensaron

Cerberus

I wonder how they came up with that o.

A common ancestor?

tchrist

CA: penso      pensí
    penses     pensares
    pensa      pensà
    pensem     pensàrem
    penseu     pensàreu
    pensen     pensaren

PT: penso      pensei
    pensas     pensaste
    pensa      pensou
    pensamos   pensámos
    pensais    pensastes
    pensam     pensaram

Catalan differs. It has stressed /a/ at the end.

I can almost "see" (hear) -avi becoming -é over millennia.

Cerberus

Hmm.

tchrist

But I can't figure out how they got to stressed /o/.

Cerberus

03:35

How is it with non-a-verbs?

alphabet

@Cerberus Development and running trials are only about 20% of what a drug company does.

At most.

Cerberus

@alphabet See above.

alphabet

@Cerberus You never answered me.

tchrist

comer: comió, parir: parió, beber: bebió;
vivir: vivió, pedir: pidió, sonreir: sonrió, morir: murió; ser: fue; ir: fue

decir: dijo

There are all the strong ones that don't take ultimate stress.

alphabet

Here's an example: who does the process chemistry to figure out how to actually make the drug in large quantities and sets up the manufacturing facilities? Even to do a large-scale, Phase III clinical trial, you need to have this in place. Universities are not well-suited to become manufacturing plants.

tchrist

03:37

saber: supo, caber: cupo

alphabet

Yes, you could have publicly-funded institutions do this. That would just be a publicly-owned drug company.

tchrist

They have unstressed /e/ in the first person and unstressed /o/ in third.

Cerberus

@alphabet Nobody said universities had to do it, straw man.

alphabet

One could argue for that, but it's more like nationalizing an entire industry than just figuring out how to do developing and testing.

Cerberus

@alphabet That is not "just".

And I mentioned other options.

And there are more options.

tchrist

03:39

Answer is here: staff.ncl.ac.uk/i.e.mackenzie/hisverb.htm

> The endings shown above were contracted in spoken Latin, usually through elision of the perfective marker -v-, which occurred between the stem vowel and the remainder of the ending. In the first person singular in both conjugations, loss of -v- yields -āī and -īī respectively. The latter was probably pronounced [i] as soon as the element -v- was lost and continues into modern Spanish as -í, e.g. in dormí ‘I slept’. The former, pronounced [aj], reduced naturally to /e/ (compare bāsium > [bajso] > beso ‘kiss’), whence the modern ending -é, as in hablé ‘I spoke’.

alphabet

> You would either create medicine-testing institutions, or you award money to companies to do the development and testing.

tchrist

> In the third person plural, the dissimilated ending [-jeɾon(t)] (> modern ieron) appears to have ousted [-iɾon(t)] before Spanish came to be written down, but competition between assimilated and dissimilated endings in the second person (singular and plural) as well as in the first person plural continued into the High Middle Ages. Thus, as late as the thirteenth century, forms with dissimilated endings, such as dixiemos ‘we said’ and recibiestes ‘you [plural] received’, co-existed with forms that had assimilated endings, such as sobimos ‘we climbed’ and salistes ‘you [plural] left’. Eve…

alphabet

My point is that this wouldn't work.

Cerberus

Very typical, people think better solutions "won't work". Well, the current system doesn't work at all, it is a disaster.

alphabet

I don't dispute that.

tchrist

03:43

So the third paragraph explains that -avi /awi/ had /aw/ go to /o/ per usual.

Other explanations apply in the other conjugations under yod.

But it retained stress even after fusing.

It wasn't reanalysed.

Cerberus

@tchrist OK makes sense.

alphabet

That said, our current system, despite its flaws, has done quite a good job at producing valuable new medicine.

tchrist

@Cerberus Notice how French is no different. But with the loss of lexical stress, things because troublesome.

pense      pensai
penses     pensas
pense      pensa
pensons    pensâmes
pensez     pensâtes
pensent    pensèrent

Also with the "loss" of mute e. So they lost being a pro-drop tongue.

When French still enjoyed lexical stress, those will surely have sounded much more like the rest of Western Romance.

So French pensa would have been more like Catalan pensà.

Cerberus

@alphabet There would be more, better, and far cheaper medicines without it.

Just as Germany was a powerhouse of technology before it introduced patents.

Or so I read.

Around 1900 or so.

alphabet

@Cerberus My point is that the existing system has had a large number of successes. Perhaps another system would work better. Perhaps not.

Cerberus

03:50

@tchrist So French didn't do aw → o, nor v → u → o.

@alphabet That is a platitude, sorry.

alphabet

I don't doubt the "cheaper" part. I'm very skeptical of the "more" and "better" parts.

tchrist

Well, it got to -à somehow, like Catalan.

In the third person.

In first, it simply lost /w/.

I can't say how that worked with -avit, but it must have. Somehow.

Cerberus

The new system was partially demonstrated in the creation of the Corona vaccines.

Governments paid a bunch of money before hand, to fund development. And the medicines were sold at around cost price.

They were developed in record time.

tchrist

And their preterite pensas might even have been some reänalysis for all I know. It's hard to file down -avistis far enough.

I dunno, ask the Frenchman. :)

alphabet

@Cerberus Who performed the trials? And who got the patents?

Cerberus

03:56

See above.

alphabet

Incidentally, some of them actually decided not to patent their vaccines, because they knew that they were the only ones with the technology to properly manufacture them.

In the US, the Covid vaccines were largely funded by injecting money into the existing system and fast-tracking the approval process.

Cerberus

See above.

alphabet

I did see above and it didn't answer me.

The point is that, if you give the drug companies tons of money, and still let them patent their medications, then they develop medications very rapidly and they won't charge as much. But I'm not sure how that really presents an alternative system.

tchrist

Ad astra per aspera.

Cerberus

> Governments paid a bunch of money before hand, to fund development.

> And the medicines were sold at around cost price.

Exactly as I said it. This is how it should be.

alphabet

04:04

@Cerberus You mean the government should continually give tons of money to existing large pharmaceutical companies, with relatively few strings attached? While keeping the patent system in place?

Cerberus

> And the medicines were sold at around cost price.

No patent system.

Out the door it goes.

alphabet

@Cerberus Moderna and Pfizer are currently embroiled in a massive patent dispute over mRNA vaccines.

Cerberus

Read with the principle of charity in mind.

alphabet

Besides, patenting them wasn't necessary, since no other companies had the expertise to manufacture them, at least in the short term.

Cerberus

I'm not going to explain every little detail.

alphabet

04:08

I won't expect you to.

CowperKettle

04:19

good morning

alphabet

good evening!

It's 11:20pm for me, 9:20am for you, and 5:20am for Cerberus?

CowperKettle

Yes

Cerberus lives on Enceladus, and time count is different there

> One day on Enceladus is equal to 1.37 Earth days, or one day, 8 hours, and 53 minutes.

Cerberus

I wish!

alphabet

Did you stay up late, or wake up early?

CowperKettle

I woke up at 02:40, then drank some tea till 04:00, then slept til 09:00

alphabet

04:25

Or do your three heads sleep in shifts?

@CowperKettle I meant Cerberus

CowperKettle

Ah!

alphabet

As a raccoon, I am naturally nocturnal. Unfortunately I need to work during the day. It is not optimal.

CowperKettle

Starting September 2024, all Internet providers in Russia may be obligated to track the geolocation of each IP address belonging to them e1.ru/text/world/2024/01/19/73136009

A unified system will be maintained by the state, called GeoIP

Cerberus

Scary.

Use a VPN always?

CowperKettle

Yes, probably

Better - have a friend abroad set up a VPN pretending to be a website

And "use this website always" :)

Cerberus

04:32

Also sounds good.

Does ToR work well?

CowperKettle

It worked fine when I tried it out, probably it was in the summer

Cerberus

Good.

CowperKettle

Tails (operating system)

Tails, or "The Amnesic Incognito Live System", is a security-focused Debian-based Linux distribution aimed at preserving Internet privacy and anonymity. It connects to the Internet exclusively through the anonymity network Tor. The system is designed to be booted as a live DVD or live USB and never writes to the hard drive or SSD, leaving no digital footprint on the machine unless explicitly told to do so. It can also be run as a virtual machine, with some additional security risks.The Tor Project provided financial support for Tails' development in the beginnings of the project, and continues...

An OS recommended by Snowden

alphabet

Even here the police can usually get your ISP to figure out what subscriber used a particular IP address; if you're really worried about government surveillance you should already be using a VPN/proxy/Tor/etc.

CowperKettle

Qubes OS

Qubes OS is a security-focused desktop operating system that aims to provide security through isolation. Isolation is provided through the use of virtualization technology. This allows the segmentation of applications into secure virtual machines called qubes. Virtualization services in Qubes OS are provided by the Xen hypervisor. The runtimes of individual qubes are generally based on a unique system of underlying operating system templates. Templates provide a single, immutable root file system which can be shared by multiple qubes. This approach has two major benefits. First, updates to a given...

And I should look for some program for a smartphone that would pretend to be the whole operating system with innocently-looking apps and innocently-looking Telegram chats

alphabet

04:41

Of course, this only applies if the police know that your IP address was the source of some sort of offensive traffic.

Cerberus

@CowperKettle Can't you simply use a work profile for that?

Android allows that.

CowperKettle

@Cerberus Thanks! I'll read up on that

Cerberus

And a non-technical user shouldn't be able to notice.

alphabet

Often finding the IP address associated with an online account, for instance, would require the cooperation of the site you're visiting.

Cerberus

@CowperKettle Maybe use Shelter or Island. I haven't used them, but they should be able to isolate applications using the work profile in the background.

Not 100% sure how it all works.

@alphabet If the site uses https, probably.

Dannyu NDos

04:56

An honest person wouldn't have to use VPN/proxy/Tor/whatever suspicious.

alphabet

@Cerberus Exactly. As most sites do nowadays.

@DannyuNDos Maybe in your country.

Dannyu NDos

That said... Are "suspicious" and "doubtful" synonyms?

alphabet

@DannyuNDos No. They mean very different things.

Dannyu NDos

Too sadge "suspicive" isn't a word.

'Cause I once sought for appropriate names for 3-valued unary logic gates.

alphabet

From Cambridge Dictionary:
suspicious: making you feel that something illegal is happening or that something is wrong
doubtful: If you are doubtful about something, you are uncertain about it
(Among other senses.)

Grr SE chat screws up my formatting attempts.

Cerberus

05:01

@DannyuNDos That is ridiculous, sorry.

Dannyu NDos

For suppose that, in addition to False and True, Unknown is the third truth value. If a gate changes U to T, that's assumption. If a gate changes T to U, that's suspicion. That's my thought.

alphabet

@DannyuNDos If you're inventing terminology, you can use whichever terms you want.

Dannyu NDos

Though eventually, I scrapped that idea and chose NOT, AND, OR, COMParison, and PRIority as the gates.

That happened in 2017, when I participated in an academy contest held by the department in my univ.

Dannyu NDos

05:17

*Sigh* Someone needs a new word.

alphabet

Raccoon and Cat Make Cute Pair || ViralHog

►

Dannyu NDos

Too sadge "untrue" is a word but "unfalse" isn't.

Xanne

05:54

New word for me: narco-submarine. “A narco-submarine (also called a drug sub or narco-sub) is a type of custom ocean-going, self-propelled, semi-submersible or fully-submersible vessel built by (or for) drug smugglers.[2][3][4]”

CowperKettle

07:27

The use of feminitives in Russian, like psychologess (психологиня) etc. may be considered a sign of association of a person with the extremist organization LGBT, says a multipage statement issued by the Supreme Court rbc.ru/politics/19/01/2024/65a988199a79479c5a19e963

M.A.R.

10:59

@Vikas that's not a definition of "pundit" I'm familiar with

@Cerberus isn't a government's budget way more strictly managed than an R&D's in a Pharma company? My experience is, if the company will need an extra billion because of a hitch in the process, extra funding will be delayed and lost in bureaucracy

@Cerberus um, the reasons Covid vaccines were out so soon was 1) Adenovirus vectors 2) accelerated FDA approval

This accelerated approval was basically allowing companies to work on the next phase before FDA had reviewed the results of the previous one

I think that, without patents, we may end up with better drugs, and they will be cheaper too, and more accessible, but there would be far fewer truly novel drugs.

Once we know a drug molecule works, it's very possible that slightly modifying its chemistry to come up with a new molecule, you would end up with one that's also therapeutic. Companies patent all of these very similar molecules. If they won't, you would end up with, say, dozens of ACE inhibitors instead of 3.

Now, the upside would be that they would be more readily available to the public. You'd save many more lives than if you had to wait until Pfizer's 20-year patent expired. OTOH, the company that invested an extra couple billion on finding the new drug will have the same profits as the ones who made similar molecules without investing anything.

(Except for the trials, formulation, scale-up etc.)

To be honest I haven't spent much thought on possible alternatives to strict patenting. It never crossed my mind that I would be able to contribute to anything with such thoughts.

CowperKettle

12:11

32 Prospekt Lenina, Samara maps.app.goo.gl/8ff4KCNi6zMFDVpVA

CowperKettle

12:22

> Probiotics were superior to brexpiprazole, cariprazine, citalopram, duloxetine, desvenlafaxine, ketamine, venlafaxine, vilazodone, vortioxetine, and placebo, and were noninferior to other antidepressants. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38219239

Sauerkraut beats SSRI

Robusto

14:17

Wordle 944 4/6

⬛🟨⬛⬛🟨
⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Robusto

14:35

Daily Octordle #725
🔟3️⃣
7️⃣5️⃣
8️⃣6️⃣
🕚9️⃣
Score: 59

Vikas

#Worldle #728 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
⭐⭐🏙️🪙⭐
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

Robusto

@Vikas Tough one, huh?

#Worldle #728 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
⭐⭐⭐🏙️🪙⭐📐
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

Vikas

I don't understand. If India is 3214 Kms long and 2933 Kms wide, how come we have area 3.2 Km^2?

Robusto

@Vikas Uh, because India is not a rectangle?

Vikas

It has to be like a rectangle to occupy that much area. But we are not a rectangle.

@Robusto Exactly.

That's why I find it hard to believe and that's why I underestimated our area. And consequently, underestimated today's Worldle area.

Robusto

14:40

@Vikas 3.2 km^2 would be a very small country. Are you sure you did your math right?

Vikas

Oops

Replace that with 3.2 million Km^2

Robusto

Better.

India would easily fit into the sub-equatorial part of Africa, I think.

user 85795

in This Is Fine, Jan 15 at 11:18, by Wipqozn

The wealth of the world’s five richest men more than doubled since 2020 https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/14/economy/oxfam-report-wealth-davos-forum/index.html

Vikas

@Robusto Dammit all doubts cleared right now. I don't know how I calculated something wrong today afternoon. Right now everything seems normal. I had most probably confused 9000000 with 900K. Afterall I was calculating everything in my mind.

Robusto

@user85795 Even worse, to be in what used to be called the middle class, you have to be in the top 10% in wealth.

Vikas

14:53

@user85795 Yeah I remember many brands got more wealth after pandemic.

user 85795

> At the same time, nearly 5 billion people globally have become poorer, as they contend with inflation, war and the climate crisis. It would take nearly 230 years to eliminate poverty based on the current trajectory.

This is the post-pandemic world we're left with.

re: Oxfam

user 85795

15:08

Inequality Inc. How corporate power divides our world and the need for a new era of public action

Vikas

@user85795 True

CowperKettle

15:38

> External research has pegged Meta’s H100 shipments for 2023 at 150,000, a number that is tied only with Microsoft’s shipments and at least three times larger than everyone else’s. When its Nvidia A100s and other AI chips are accounted for, Meta will have a stockpile of almost 600,000 GPUs by the end of 2024, according to Zuckerberg.

They are really addicted to video games

Vikas

I hope it doesn't cause chip shortage again.

GPUs are already expensive.

CowperKettle