English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

CowperKettle

03:27

@user85795 I don't think there's a need. It would just involve going to the same doctors who already saw me.

alphabet

04:17

1

A: "I'm against this question primarily because of the username and icon"

I want to address the last part of your question, which was about how we handle questions from non-native speakers. ELU offers gets questions that are quite obviously (based on their content or writing style) from non-native speakers learning the basics of the language. Those questions usually, a...

I have successfully managed to answer this meta question without turning it into a polemic about the situation in Gaza. Except for that last paragraph, which I hope is too anodyne to get anyone worked up.

user 85795

04:43

@CowperKettle go to a different hospital.

CowperKettle

@user85795 I don't have money.

alphabet

04:57

@CowperKettle I looked up "vegeto-vascular dystonia," and it seems to be a diagnosis only used in Russia and Eastern Europe for some reason.

Vegetative-vascular dystonia - is it real?

CowperKettle

05:34

@alphabet I know - it's a basket case diagnosis slapped on everybody without frank symptoms of something extra-severe

alphabet

05:45

An Ad-Hoc, Informally-Specified, Bug-Ridden, Single-Subject Study Of Weight Loss Via Potassium Supplementation And Exercise Without Dieting

That post is batshit crazy but also kinda impressive

> I used potassium chloride powder (whatever came up first on an Amazon search since all KCl should be alike) mixed with regular Gatorade (i.e. not the sugar-free kind) to make it taste okay (I recommend blue Gatorade, it's the closest to appealing when kaliated — the yellow lemon-lime was meh and the fruit punch red was awful).

> I added two heaping teaspoons of KCl powder to a 20oz. bottle of Gatorade and drank that. KCl is about 52% potassium and a heaping teaspoon of it is about 6500mg, so I rounded up a smidge and called that 6600-and-a-bit milligrams of potassium per bottle. On Thursdays and Sundays I drank 2 full bottles and on other days 1.5 bottles. I recorded this as 10,000mg of potassium on regular days and 13,500mg on Thursdays and Sundays.

The poster claims to have lost a lot of weight.

I have a feeling that this must be very bad for you for some reason.

Imma try snorting the powder to see if it works better /s

Dannyu NDos

06:30

Mmmm

Taste the capitalism.

M.A.R.

@alphabet I'm not sure, but this dose of oral KCl probably acts as a mild laxative.

Of course, KCl by any other route than oral would have meant he'd be too dead to complete his spreadsheet.

The use of laxatives to indice weight loss is common. But this is probably not even that, since at least divalent cations like magnesium can influence the GI tract appreciably. So he was probably just too occupied with sports drinks to receive Calories by other means and he lost weight.

@CowperKettle dafuq is that. Your vessels turn into plants?

I mean I wouldn't put it past Russia

> The syndrome of vegetative vascular dystonia associated with constitutional nature at an early age is characterized by instability of vegetative parameters.

checks self for plant parts

I don't have any vegetative parameters!

panic

Okay joking aside, it seems to be either a mistranslation, or some term from earlier (maybe Russian folk?) medicine that is incompatible with modern medicine.

It could be pseudoscience.

I mean websites keep showing me stock photos of women with tension headaches for this vegeta DragonBall thing.

This shady feeling website seems to describe Vegeta To be plain ol' GAD. Maybe panic disorder at worst. bookinghealth.com/disease/vegetative-dystonia

Don't click on it if it'll steal your money. It hasn't stolen mine yet tho

CowperKettle

07:54

@M.A.R. It's just a garbage bin diagnosis that about 50% of patients receive at the neurogolist, with a prescription for some multivitamins and magnetic therapy and other pseudo-scientific stuff, like Cerebrolysine injections

I was prescribed magnetic therapy when I started hobbling on one leg in 2015.

I attended it once just for fun, and asked the technician whether she believed that it worked, and she said yes, surely

You put your leg through a magnet and they turn it on, and you just lie down there for a time

Cooking of the day: rope spoilage of bread

Bacillus subtilis

Bacillus subtilis(), known also as the hay bacillus or grass bacillus, is a gram-positive, catalase-positive bacterium, found in soil and the gastrointestinal tract of ruminants, humans and marine sponges. As a member of the genus Bacillus, B. subtilis is rod-shaped, and can form a tough, protective endospore, allowing it to tolerate extreme environmental conditions. B. subtilis has historically been classified as an obligate aerobe, though evidence exists that it is a facultative anaerobe. B. subtilis is considered the best studied Gram-positive bacterium and a model organism to study bacterial...

Dannyu NDos

08:34

Is it just me, or do lateral consonants actually tend to be dextral rather than sinistral?

I felt like this especially when pronouncing [ɬ] or [ɬ̼].

user 85795

12:34

I visited the world's hardest math class

►

Dannyu NDos

13:16

[SynthV Mai(마이)] [Korean Adaptation] Евге́ний Крыла́тов ― Колыбельная медведицы (새끼 북극곰을 위한 자장가)

►

@CowperKettle This is for you, I guess?

Robusto

13:42

Wordle 1,083 4/6

⬛⬛⬛🟩🟨
⬛⬛🟨⬛⬛
⬛🟩⬛🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Robusto

13:58

#WhenTaken #100 (06.06.2024)

I scored 832/1000 🎉

1️⃣ 📍 2 km - 🗓️ 11 yrs - ⚡ 182 / 200
2️⃣ 📍 3 km - 🗓️ 2 yrs - ⚡ 198 / 200
3️⃣ 📍 314 km - 🗓️ 14 yrs - ⚡ 163 / 200
4️⃣ 📍 11127 km - 🗓️ 0 yrs - ⚡ 100 / 200
5️⃣ 📍 7 km - 🗓️ 8 yrs - ⚡ 189 / 200

https://whentaken.com

NotTheDr01ds

@tchrist I'm good with your tag-edit, of course, but I'm curious about the previous edit by another user. If I'm understanding your Meta post correctly, backtick formatting of inline code-statements are correct usage, right? I mean, that's the form I'll be using in the documentation itsefl ;-)

Robusto

@NotTheDr01ds On SE sites it's customary to backtick code segments.

Daily Octordle #864
🕚6️⃣
8️⃣🔟
7️⃣5️⃣
4️⃣9️⃣
Score: 60

Daily Sequence Octordle #864
4️⃣5️⃣
6️⃣7️⃣
8️⃣9️⃣
🔟🕚
Score: 60

NotTheDr01ds

14:28

@Robusto Which I did, and another user edited them out - That's what I'm asking about.

Just wanted to check before I rollback their edit.

Robusto

@NotTheDr01ds Then the other user was wrong.

NotTheDr01ds

@Robusto Thanks - I'll rollback. That's what I thought, but since I'm new on this site, I figured I'd check first.

Robusto

@NotTheDr01ds But it looks like you used hyphens instead of backticks in your version.

NotTheDr01ds

Huh?

No ...

Robusto

1. Singular form: "Use the cd command to change to a new working directory."

1. Singular form: *"Use the cd` command to change to a new working directory."*`

NotTheDr01ds

14:31

@Robusto Still confused. The first one is what I posted, which uses backticks for Markdown formatting of the inline code.

Robusto

I think the other user was trying to correct what they thought was a misapplication. Only put the backticks around the code segment.

NotTheDr01ds

I only have backticks around the words cd and chdir in my post.

I'm thoroughly confused on what you are seeing.

Robusto

It looks like you somehow have hyphens and backticks. I don't understand how you got that.

NotTheDr01ds

LOL - You seeing the strikethrough - Those aren't hyphens. That's the SE "diff" code.

Look at english.stackexchange.com/revisions/… for the original

Robusto

Ah. I just looked at the source. You're right, just roll it back.

@NotTheDr01ds Yeah, it's easier to strikethrough when it, um, strikes something through. LOL

> I'm updating some software documentation and referring to the `cd` command in a shell/commandline.  I'm starting with the assumption that all of the following are correct (but please do validate this assumption):

1. Singular form: *"Use the `cd` command to change to a new working directory."*
2. Plural form: *"Use the `cd` command to change between directories."*
3. Singular form: *"Use the `cd` command to change from one directory to another."*

Now I need to shorten it as much as possible for a summary/title.  Which of the following would be considered correct vs. incorrect?

NotTheDr01ds

14:38

@Robusto Cool - Thanks, and rolled-back.

jlliagre

#WhenTaken #100 (06.06.2024)

I scored 830/1000 🎉

1️⃣ 📍 1 km - 🗓️ 9 yrs - ⚡ 187 / 200
2️⃣ 📍 296.4 metres - 🗓️ 7 yrs - ⚡ 191 / 200
3️⃣ 📍 788 km - 🗓️ 6 yrs - ⚡ 169 / 200
4️⃣ 📍 10044 km - 🗓️ 2 yrs - ⚡ 98 / 200
5️⃣ 📍 3 km - 🗓️ 10 yrs - ⚡ 185 / 200

https://whentaken.com

Tu m'as battu d'un cheveu!

Robusto

15:05

@jlliagre I had a good sleep last night!

BTW, I should have known cheveu without looking it up. I knew it from La fille aux cheveux du lin.

Actually, de not du. D'oh!

> I was comfortable writing the [N-word] out for reference purposes well into the 2010s, out of a sense that a Black writer might have somewhat more flexibility. In a 2021 essay about the word’s evolution, I made the decision to use it, carefully. But I have since come to feel that doing so makes so many people so uncomfortable that it is not gracious or effective.
The N-word has become, in this, unique in the English language. There are still some contexts in which it could be acceptable for a man to name the most vicious slur against women, or a straight person to refer to words that hav…

tchrist

17:02

@NotTheDr01ds Yes, most technical documentation these days tends to use monospace for code, at least in code displays. Occasionally you will see them instead switch from proportional serif to proportional sans, but that's not as common. Add there's still some that uses italic for inline names of code elements like the name of a function, but that's an older standard. What my meta post was doing was trying to get people to stop using backticks for things that are not code.

> I.1.a. c1225– transitive. To substitute one thing for (another); to replace (something) with something else, esp. something which is newer or better; to give up (something) in order to replace it with something else.

In this sense (though not necessarily in sense I.1b) the two things involved in the act of substitution are usually of the same type. It is therefore sometimes difficult to distinguish this sense from sense I.2a.i.

I.1.b. c1300– transitive. To give up or get rid of (a thing) in order to replace it with something else. With for (formerly also †with), specifying the replaceme…

@NotTheDr01ds Notice sense "I.1.c. 1525– transitive. With plural object." quoted above.

Suppose you have a variable color. If you at one point set color = "blue" but later reassign that via color = "red", have you changed colors or changed the color? As a kernel developer, I think of the process's current working directory as a field in the struct proc or struct user that represents the directory inode for that process, the inumber from a mounted file system. You know, why you can't unmount a filesystem because somebody has cd'd there. So to me this's like assignment.

Changing sides or changing roles or changing skin color or changing money.

A bare NP without a determiner is usually in the plural. Add a determiner like a or the or my or your, and it feels different.

CowperKettle

17:48

@DannyuNDos A well-known tune in Russia, from a nice children's cartoon

Robusto

18:01

@tchrist This is probably to emulate what we see in our code editors. For me it's imperative to used a monospace font, as close to in Unix or Linux (or Cygwin) as possible.

Proportional fonts just screw everything up.

CowperKettle

@DannyuNDos It's bad for the body..

MetaEd

18:36

Wordle 1,083 3/6

⬛⬛⬛🟨🟨
⬛🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

jlliagre

20:10

Wordle 1,083 4/6

⬛⬛⬛⬛🟨
⬛🟨🟨⬛⬛
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

user 85795

Le word.

La word.

jlliagre

Le Mot (@WordleFR) #879 3/6

⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛🟨🟨⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

https://wordle.louan.me

Daily Octordle #864
5️⃣7️⃣
8️⃣🔟
🕛4️⃣
9️⃣🕚
Score: 66

user 85795

20:26

🤔

😎

jlliagre

Daily Sequence Octordle #864
5️⃣6️⃣
7️⃣8️⃣
9️⃣🔟
🕚🕛
Score: 68

Le jour J.

user 85795

0️⃣.9️⃣9️⃣9️⃣...=1️⃣

jlliagre

@user85795 It's obvious if you divide both terms by 3.

user 85795

"obvious", yes.

😁

M.A.R.

@user85795 🥱

user 85795

20:38

🤐

user 85795

21:23

∞ many hours later...

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…