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01:32
Word of the morn: least weasel
@CowperKettle HILARIOUS!
01:57
@tchrist An organist I knew had a very powerful audio rig (Macintosh preamp, power amp, JBL S8R speakers, etc.) and when he played organ music on it you could feel the lowest pedal tones vibrate the whole building on pitch, even though you couldn't actually hear them. I think it was like 16 Hz.
That's one of the S8R stereo speakers. Airtight cabinet with a passive radior and a 15" bass speaker. Midrange was a horn and tweeter was a "ring radiator" ...
How many fricking languages do you have to know to read organ stops? Gosh.
       GREAT                     SWELL                    CHOIR

   16' Double Diapason       16' Contra Salicional    16' Contra Dulciana
    8' First Diapason        16' Echo Lieblich         8' Diapason
    8' Second Diapason        8' Geigen Principal      8' Viola
    4' Octave                 8' Hohlflöte             8' Concert Flute
2 2/3' Octave Quint           8' Rohrflöte             8' Dulciana
    2' Super Octave           8' Salicional            8' Unda Maris
III-V  Full Mixture           8' Voix Celeste          4' Prestant
Needless to say, his neighbors didn't approve.
(That's the stop list for the great organ at Denver's Episcopal Cathedral of St. John in the Wilderness on Capitol Hill.)
@Robusto Did their plaster fall off ilke Cowper's? :)
> Kimball 7231 1938 4/96
Spencer & Zamberlan 2009-12 Main Organ Restoration & Antiphonal
I don't think I've been since the antiphonal pedal was installed in 2016.
@tchrist That was the worst part. The house would vibrate at awkward resonances, so like the D1 would make a stair buzz and the F#1 would cause the fireplace mantle to rattle, etc.
I told him, "You have a great audio setup, but now you need a custom-built house to contain it."
Audio freaks need their own buildings.
02:05
But he still didn't think it matched the cathedrals he'd played at.
I really can't fathom organists. How do you read three staves of a Bach fugue AND hit all the stops in the right places? This is a level beyond my ken.
Actually several levels beyond.
And then there's Helmut Walcha, who did all that though blind. (Not the reading part, but the learning and playing.)
Arthur Emil Helmut Walcha (27 October 1907 – 11 August 1991) was a German organist, harpsichordist, music teacher and composer who specialized in the works of the Dutch and German baroque masters. Blind since his teenage years, he is known for his recordings of the complete organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach, entirely played by memory. == Biography == Born in Leipzig, Walcha was blinded at age 19 after vaccination for smallpox. Despite his disability, he entered the Leipzig Conservatory and became an assistant at the Thomaskirche to Günther Ramin, who was professor of organ at the conservatory...
@Robusto I think you have to have everything set up in advance, but I may be wrong.
@tchrist Yeah, you program it ahead of time, but you still have to hit the buttons to switch setups.
There are buttons under the front of each manual.
That's a nice recording.
I've heard the St Anne done on the St John's organ.
I have his entire Archiv set.
@tchrist One good saint deserves another. ^_^
Santa Ciaccona got to me lately.
That guy's. Young French pianist.
It's the nice Brahms one, not the pounding Busoni one.
552 ≠ 543? :)
Correct.
Interesting having a blind organist.
He has to know that particular instrument extremely well. But organs vary in where they put all the things he has to pull.
Yes. I'm sure he had to play on each one a lot before he recorded.
Think of how different pianos are.
But a concert pianist doesn't need orientation for every new piano the way an organist does for every new organ he plays on.
02:26
Someone said you haven't really memorized a piece until you've played it on multiple pianos. And I agree.
Every instrument is different.
If you just play your own piano, you know its ins and outs, its touch, its voicing, all that. I think it's a version of practice-room syndrome. Because you can't bring your instrument everywhere. And each new one is ... new. And different.
Organs are the same, only more so.
;)
The touch is the thing I miss on other pianos.
Well, of course. You are used to the touch on yours.
I also played on dozens of pianos before choosing this one.
When I was shopping for one.
And knowing you, I suspect you have had it voiced and adjusted minutely to suit your taste.
I keep it in the standard tuning. Sure a lot of earlier music sounds better in different tunings but you can't play anything after early Beethoven that way unless you pick your pieces very, very carefully.
The really good tuners do ask, though.
02:35
Well, of course. On my digital I can choose a tuning, and sometimes I play Baroque and earlier pieces in a different one, but then it hurts my ears to go back to standard.
03:02
> 1836 The public worship of the Moos′lims. — E. W. Lane, Account of Manners & Customs of Modern Egyptians vol. I. iii. 97
Mooselings sighted.
> The Chaconne is, in my opinion, one of the most wonderful and most
incomprehensible pieces of music. Using the technique adapted to a
small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest
thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I could picture myself
writing, or even conceiving, such a piece, I am certain that the
extreme excitement and emotional tension would have driven me mad.
If one has no supremely great violinist at hand, the most exquisite
of joys is probably simply to let the Chaconne ring in one’s mind.
Noun: mooseling (plural mooselings)
  1. (rare) A small, young, or baby moose.
  2. 1915, Ruth Kedzie Wood, The Tourist's Maritime Provinces, Dodd, Mead, p. 42 (Google snippet view):
  3. Gently, with a hand on its furry neck, the three- or four-day-old mooseling was towed back to the shore where the distraught mother was thrashing and stomping among the trees.
Highly amoosing.
04:22
@CowperKettle What's that in his hand?
04:49
Tenebrio obscurus, or the dark mealworm beetle, is a species of darkling beetle whose larvae are known as mini mealworms. These insects should not be confused with younger mealworms (Tenebrio molitor) or with the confused flour beetle (Tribolium confusum).Tenebrio obscurus larvae resemble very small mealworms. Larvae are cylindrical and initially white, darkening as they mature. Larvae can reach a length of 25 to 30 millimetres (0.98 to 1.18 in). Larvae then pupate, and later emerge as small, black beetles, 12 to 18 millimetres (0.47 to 0.71 in) long. In appearance, adults are similar to the yellow...
05:58
> confused flour beetle
Sounds like me before an exam
06:27
I'm feeling dead tired the next day after running 10K
Curiously, on the same day after running, I didn't
06:45
> Earth’s average surface temperature in 2023 was the warmest on record, according to an analysis by NASA. Global temperatures last year were around 2.1 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius) above the average for NASA’s baseline period (1951-1980), scientists from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York reported.
06:55
14089 new electric cars were sold in Russia in 2023, almost 5 times more than in 2022
In 2022, only 5 new electric car charging stations were installed in the whole Sverdlovsk Oblast, and in 2023 in Yekaterinburg alone 18 were installed
That's why I noticed one recently near my home
07:52
A man got 6.5 years of jail for beating up his former wife in 2021, but enrolled in the army in 2023 and has now returned and beat up her again. She and kids are now hiding in a rented flat e1.ru/text/criminal/2024/01/28/73169582
 
2 hours later…
09:29
Japanese of the day: Ukiyo 浮世 - floating world
10:26
Why did the pirate walk the plank?
Because he didn't own a dog
 
4 hours later…
14:50
Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art that flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings of such subjects as female beauties; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes from history and folk tales; travel scenes and landscapes; flora and fauna; and erotica. The term ukiyo-e (浮世絵) translates as 'picture[s] of the floating world'. In 1603, the city of Edo (Tokyo) became the seat of the ruling Tokugawa shogunate. The chōnin class (merchants, craftsmen and workers), positioned at the bottom of the social order, benefited the most from the city's rapid...
15:12
@alphabet I think it came from Spanish desaparecido.
I don't think anyone's used my new close reason yet, but the close percentage is still at 60%. It seems like people have just changed to migrating to ELL…
My feeling is we do get 60% inappropriate questions
people want this not to be true but it persists neverthless
15:27
Well I'm not finished doing stuff. Considering this new pattern, I think it might make a lot of sense to work on changing ELU's Ask Question modal next, because we can hopefully either increase the quality of the questions we get or prevent them from being asked in the first place
For context, I was seeing 80% closed some days before I announced my new policy. It used to be very out of control; I really do think the rate decreased a little bit
An improved Question Wizard would be welcome and a boon, I think
the site has definitely got a subdued air recently, a dropoff in regulars that at least I recognize. I wonder if the drop in closures can be attributed partly to that
@DanBron Doubtful, I think. I posted the new policy and then I saw closures decrease shortly after that
fair
@DanBron It's not what I would describe as a "Wizard". Unfortunately we (users, moderators, and anyone who's not in charge of SE dev time) are pretty limited with what we can change about the page, mostly just the modal, sidebar, and tag warnings
I wonder if the exodus is really mostly to ChatGPT like on the big sites; it seems to me SE isn't a "place to go" anymore
15:37
I guess it's possible, but I'm hoping those are the questions we wouldn't want anyway
@Laurel Yes, I understand
PS, check out the meta post if you haven't already:
26
Q: Replacing our "research" close reason: Final review

LaurelUpdate: Closing remarks The phrasing I suggested in an answer below is now live: Background 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. Ho...

they definitely would be unwelcome on the site
I've been tracking it
I am not totally gone from the site, i check in every week or so
However, some people are utterly convinced that ChatGPT can answer stuff it actually can't. Like etymology questions
It just throws out guesses
asked a questsion for the first time in an eternity recently, was somewhat disappointed by the results, though people put good work in. I wonder if Sven is still around?
15:39
I've seen him around
Yeah, that's a prevalent misconception about LLMs
Looked at the site analytics lately?
but i understand where the mistake originated
originates
That's from the 25k tool, not the mod tools.
Painful
15:41
yeah, real overall downtrend, but no big dip recently AFAICT
I think the decrease is related to things happening on SO. Fewer people visiting SO, fewer visiting here
but the site has been headed this way for years; was probably inevitable after its initial success and it lost its
"small town" charm
agreed
What I found weird is that ELL is the bigger site now as far as activity goes
still don't think permitting baisc workaday Qs from NNSes would have helped and I don't regret the policy or enforcement
It always shouldhave been! Just took a while. We should be the niche site.
They should be the overwhelmingly popular one.
@DanBron But that's the thing, it wasn't just NNS questions getting closed, which was one of the contributing factors to the policy change
15:46
I usually only see NNS-level Qs closed, whether asked by a NNS or not, as our user-blind policies dictate (correctly)
Maybe it's that "NNS-level" is hard to measure. I was hearing mods from other sites complaining that they didn't like asking here, and I was also seeing questions go through a close-reopen cycle, which really shouldn't be happening
Well, it shouldn't be happening as often as I was seeing it happen
I agree on the cycles- that indicates a difference of opinion. They should get the benefit of the doubt, IMO. As for other people saying they don't like asking here: sure they don't, we want quality questions, and quality means we ask them to put in effort, which is work. Same old song as on SE, or Usenet before it.
"They should get the benefit of the doubt" Yep
I've made some proposals on how to fix this, either by tweaking the close vote thresholds or finding the users responsible for closing questions that later get reopened.
@alphabet I don't think we have a closure problem, I think we have a quality question problem.
15:53
@DanBron The thing about me specifying mods is that these are people who know how SE works and are usually willing to put in the effort to make a good question
All the tweaks in the world will net you nothing more than a front page of low-level low-effort uninteresting detritus
One other issue is that, for questions from native speakers, you can appeal to intuition ("X is grammatically correct because Y is obviously grammatically correct"). With NNSs, you can't do that, since they won't just be able to intuit that Y is correct. So the answer itself has to be different.
Oh, the mods themselves don't like asking here. That's different, gotcha.
@DanBron In my view, the presence of close/reopen cycles--many of them going back and forth several times--is a problem in and of itself; it makes the experience bad for everyone and we should try to stop it.
@DanBron Ironically, the most popular questions (at least according to views) are the most utterly basic ones that everyone has
15:55
Have the fonts changed in chat in last few months? They appear a bit thinner than before.
Jul 25, 2023 at 18:37, by alphabet
Alphabet's Law: the number of upvotes you get for an answer is inversely proportional to the time you spent writing it.
@alphabet My take is a question that shows native command (NNS or not) should be answered formally, gramatically, irrespective of the user. That's what we're here to teach. Just "making it make sense" is not eough, but it will improve any formal answer that includes it, agreed.
The fact that many of these questions are now being migrated to ELL is likely to make the close-reopen cycles stop. Not sure yet if this is a problem or not
@Vikas In chat? I don't think so
@alphabet If it's common, agreed, if it's just a rare case, then we still don't have a closure problem, with have a debate at one edge of question types
@Laurel Yeah. Maybe it could be my own system settings. Or maybe I'm just wrong.
15:58
Over time even charitability and interest can wane when the more established users continue to find other pastimes for themselves elsewhere, or when they become increasingly chary of their patience, generosity, and time even here.
@DanBron It seems to be very common here.
@DanBron It was common. Time and time again I (or other people) would go to chat to see if anyone wanted to reopen a question and I can't remember any times it stayed closed
then I think the right soln is to bring an example or 3 to Meta and have the two tribes set out their positions and try to come to a social resolution, because the disease is social, and technical tweaks oly service the symptoms, slightly
I think it's too soon after the new close vote reason to know if we still have the same problems with close-reopening cycles
You can use SEDE to get data on this; I made a table of which users cast the most close votes that get overturned by later reopens.
16:00
@DanBron I tried that already and it didn't solve much
@Laurel This isn't a cycle, it's an explicit Meta appeal, one that Meta was set up to facilitate
and back when I was active at leastreally only used and effective in very borderline vases
@Laurel Then I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but nothing else will either
I've argued that, when a closed question gets reopened, it should be impossible for anyone to close it again, or at least it should require a very high threshold. We'd need the devs to implement that, though, and I doubt they'd have much interest.
@DanBron It also happened when I would see a question that I thought should be reopened and I was too busy but then it got reopened when I was away. This type of stuff was happening multiple times a week that I was seeing
still not a cycle
We could also name and shame the worst offenders (based on the data).
16:03
@alphabet I'd back this proposal, with increasing numbers of voters for each side needed for each subsequent "turn" of the cycle
@DanBron I disagree. I guess we'll see if I'm right or not in time though
@alphabet That's slo been tried and doesn't work, and has some bad community side effects. Plus, those people literally did earn their CV priv, saying how they should use it is a bit precious
We are all shapers of the site, and all our opinions and preferences should be taken into account, excepting obvious bad-fath actors
I'm trying to do everything I can to avoid having to go after individual close voters. But either way, public shaming is not the solution to that
go after them on what charges? they are not breaking any rules
I guess in this case, the rules are the ones I set when I posted the meta post, which meta voting would suggest the majority of the site agrees with
It's a really hard situation to deal with, since there's no single way forward that every user would agree is the best option.
16:16
I'm not so invested anymore, but I do think it would be a shame to disregard and suppress those users' visions for the site by curtailing their earned privileges
I'm really trying to avoid that. And it hasn't come to that yet while there are still several other things we can try that aren't that
Word of the day: to turn out. Specifically, this sense, from Green's Dictionary of Slang:
> 2. to initiate a newcomer in a variety of situations, e.g. pimp to run a prostitute on the streets; Hell’s Angels to use a woman for multiple sex; (US Und.) to make a new inmate into a prison homosexual (usu. only for the duration of their sentence).
> I’d argue that we have become so sad, lonely, angry and mean as a society in part because so many people have not been taught or don’t bother practicing to enter sympathetically into the minds of their fellow human beings.
As the world, so the site.
@tchrist What does this mean? People asking fewer questions? Probably because of seeking answers from AI engines?
Example usage: "Always turn out the lights before your cellmate."
16:27
haha
@CowperKettle It started years earlier than AI tools
@CowperKettle The long-term trend line doesn't see a dramatic downtick with the advent of ChatGPT.
The X axis is poorly labelled, but it represents the entire site history since its debut in 2010.
I feel like the graph would be more clear without x axis labels, in fact
16:36
There is something grammatically infelicitous about the cited sentence in its conjunction reduction: people have not been taught or don’t bother practicing to enter sympathetically.
 
2 hours later…
18:28
@tchrist Is this use of "since" different from the one we use with has/have/had been?
@Vikas Huh?
What's this perfect thing doing here?
I've had no peace in the mornings since the neighbors got a noisy rooster.
Don't we use "since" when we mention some "time" with perfect thing?
@tchrist Here since == because
I think somebody has been feeding you weird ideas.
@Vikas No, it does not.
So?
As?
No, you say since.
It's now two weeks since I last went shipping.
18:34
@tchrist I'm confused here because, consider this sentence :
There must be some ELL pitfall that they've so conditioned you to avoid falling into that normal sentences with since sound strange to you. I wonder what that pitfall is.
can't think of that sentence
I remember someone corrected me a year ago about since and for usage. I can't find that sentence now. That would clear doubt why I'm confused about your sentence.
In The X-axis represents the entire site history since its debut in 2010, there is no need for fancy perfects, and it would not sound right if one were used here.
Since is for the timespan stretching from a previous point in time through the present. Often we use some perfect construction for a verb when we do that, but not all cases necessarily demand this.
There are several ELL pitfalls involving points in time versus durations between two points. But I can't bring any to mind off the top of my head.
> 1. Denoting a point of time to which the action or event mentioned is subsequent.
2. Following upon a statement (or inquiry) as to the duration of the period in question.
3. In sentences implying continuity of action or fact during the period indicated. Also with "ever", and (rarely) with "that".
Those are the normal senses of the conjunction.
There's also the since when...? case, like "Since when do we eat our peas with a spoon?" which isn't a very nice thing to say. :)
I'll search my incorrect sentence tomorrow when I'm on PC.
Aw c'mon Tom, give peas a chance.
speaking of set points in time:
why didn't that autobox?
18:47
@Vikas Here's that search for times you used the word since in chat.
in Hinduism, Oct 23, 2022 at 15:12, by Vikas
@TheLittleNaruto No. Just read few books recently that I was procrastinating since a long time 😆
That one is a wrong one. :)
Oct 24, 2022 at 15:44, by Vikas
@Mitch Ironically he hasn't released any movie since four years.
So is that. :)
Maybe @Mitch gave you a lesson then?
The Mitch one needs an "ago" tacked onto the end.
The first one should have been "for" not "since".
resumes searching for pitfallen examples
Apr 10, 2022 at 15:10, by Vikas
@tchrist Okay. I guess since is used for definite time, that's what we were taught in school IIRC
Ah I bet that was when.
Apr 10, 2022 at 14:40, by tchrist
@Vikas Yes, you can say I’ve been working on my homework since 4 o’clock.
Apr 10, 2022 at 14:41, by tchrist
The key is that since takes a point in time, not a durative period.
Apr 9, 2022 at 23:20, by tchrist
@Vikas I'm going to mention something you said because it's a very common error in English learners because of an oddity about English that you wouldn't expect. When you said "I'm following this particular blog since 1 year", that was not grammatical. It should have been "I've been following this particular blog for a year." You can't say "I'm VERBing since TIME" in English.
That's the bad one. Germans are also prone to falling in that pit when learning English.
Apr 9, 2022 at 23:33, by tchrist
English has all these weird things it does with aspects that are unlike any other Germanic language. And the Romance languages never do those either. In both you can use simple present (not progressive or perfect) or simple past (not past perfect or present perfect) for everyday things that English tosses aspects at.
That was an observation about learners not realizing they need a perfect in "This is the first time I HAVE ever VERBed".
Apr 9, 2022 at 23:25, by tchrist
The progressive really needs perfect as well for this sort of thing. You can never say you "are" working somewhere since last week. You have to say that you HAVE BEEN working somewhere since last week. It's strange. I've never heard of any other language that does this rather strange thing.
Apr 9, 2022 at 23:45, by Cerberus
@tchrist I think "this is the first time" triggers the thought of a period up to now.
 
1 hour later…
20:03
@Vikas An easy way to remember for and since, to my mind is this (setting aside since with ago). for signals a period of time. since means as of some period of time forward from a time.
 
1 hour later…
21:04
@tchrist Germans use since that way as well. Ich bin seid fünfzehn Jahren in Berlin, etc.
@Laurel Fixed
@Vikas The rule that since is used with the perfect only applies when the word since is modifying the verb. In tchrist's sentence, it's modifying the noun history.
Compare: "It was the hottest summer since 1950."
21:29
Can I say It has been being the hottest summer since 1950?
@jlliagre That would be weird.
Daily Octordle #734
🔟🕚
4️⃣6️⃣
🟥🕛
5️⃣🕐
Score: 75
Sheesh. A four-ply keyhole fail.
Daily Sequence Octordle #734
5️⃣6️⃣
7️⃣8️⃣
9️⃣🔟
🕚🕛
Score: 68
Another inversion.
Taken on this morning's ride. The Sunday 50 (miles, that is; 80 km otherrwise).
21:56
Prupià, yesterday.
@jlliagre You're on Corsica today?
I was there for a week. I heard a lot of code switching between Corsican and French. I'm back home now.
Marseille, this morning.
Nice.
No, Marseille!
Haha, I just realized that after I posted.
So I'll say schön instead. /nod
だいじょうぶです。
22:06
Beddu
Está agradable.
@jlliagre Is Corsican half Arabic?
@Robusto Why?
Because beddu sounds somehow Arabic. I think the Bedouins use it to describe themselves.
BTW, I will be cycling in Mallorca in May. Should be a good time.
22:22
@jlliagre I loaded this on slow wifi and thought you just chopped off the bottom half lol
@Robusto Ah, ok. -LL- becomes -DD- in Southern Corsica (precisely the place I was and around), like in Sardinia, and a little like Sicilia but it's unlikely to be related to Arabic. It's called cacuminale and I read it was pre-latin, possibly Iberic.
@Laurel That was the simpler option, I hesitated ;-)
23:26
@Robusto Like in Sardinia, you'll read sa and es instead of la and el there.
23:40
> In some regions, especially in the Balearic islands, the definite article derives from the Latin determiner ipse. These forms are referred to as articles salats. Similar forms are found in Sardinian and some varieties of Occitan.
@jlliagre Just as one can find in Insular Catalan, and for the same reason.
@tchrist Yes, I was precisely talking about Insular Catalan (Mallorca here). There is no es and sa in Corsican.
Oh ok. I didn't read back.
Corsican (corsu [ˈkorsu], [ˈkɔrsu]; full name: lingua corsa [ˈliŋɡwa ˈɡorsa], [ˈliŋɡwa ˈɡɔrsa]) is a Romance language consisting of the continuum of the Italo-Dalmatian dialects spoken on the Mediterranean island of Corsica (France) and on the northern end of the island of Sardinia (Italy). Corsican is related to the varieties of Tuscan from the Italian peninsula, and therefore also to the Florentine-based standard Italian. Under the long-standing influence of Tuscany's Pisa and Republic of Genoa over Corsica, Corsican used to play the role of a vernacular in combination with Italian functioning...
Oh some article variation there as well.
> The Northern and central dialects in the vicinity of the Taravo river adopt the Italian seven-vowel system, whereas all the Southern ones around the so-called "archaic zone" with its centre being the town of Sartène (including the Gallurese dialect spoken in Northern Sardinia) resort to a five-vowel system without length differentiation, like Sardinian.
I wonder how well the five- and seven-vowel people get along with each other. :)

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