English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Michael

00:02

Ok, the /join command is (pretty much) disabled now. Only bot admins (aka me) can use it.

tchrist

00:24

@Robusto The thing that I'll probably never get over about living here in the drylands of the southwest is how you can hang your laundry out to dry now right before dusk and it will ALL be complete dry by morning. You can't do that in the eastern wetlands, where it simply gets wetter from the dew, a word unknown hereabouts.

@Michael Thank you!

Robusto

01:11

@tchrist Yup. Which reminded me to take in some of the cotton garments I washed today, which were outside.

tchrist

@Robusto Glad I could be of service. No tip necessary.

Robusto

Usually it just takes a couple hours.

Conrado

01:34

@Criggie That phrase is floccinaucinihilipilificatious. I can see that it is composed of words, but I cannot understand it.

Hyperthanatic philosopher, my foot.

CowperKettle

02:40

The Kiffness - Eating the Cats ft. Donald Trump (Debate Remix)

►

CowperKettle

02:58

@Robusto You could buy a trike with a grocery basket

Robusto

@CowperKettle I am way too cool for that. ;-)

Criggie

no, you're not.
Neither am I.

When I'm old and doddery I'd rather ride that than not-ride

Though I'd put clipless pedals and a drop bar on

Robusto

03:16

@Criggie The point is to get to be old but not doddery. That's one reason I cycle.

CowperKettle

From Middle English daderen (“to quake, tremble”). Compare Norwegian dudra (“to tremble”).

dodder

Verb: dodder (third-person singular simple present dodders, present participle doddering, simple past and past participle doddered)

(intransitive) To shake or tremble as one moves, especially as of old age or childhood; to totter.

Noun: dodder (countable and uncountable, plural dodders)

Any of about 100-170 species of yellow, orange or red (rarely green) parasitic plants of the genus Cuscuta. Formerly treated as the only genus in the family Cuscutaceae, it is now placed in the morning glory family, Convolvulaceae.

Robusto

03:32

The other reason is that it makes me feel good! Both during and after the ride.

CowperKettle

I feel very bad emotionally after rides and after runs

Behemoth is waiting for me to give him water from a syringe.

He usually takes four syringes of water, that's 80 mL

He hates drinking by himself, it's probably uncomfortable to him, who knows

Robusto

@CowperKettle You must be doing it wrong. It's supposed to make you feel good and spent.

CowperKettle

@Robusto After 20 April 2018 I started feeling periods of extreme exhaustion after every physical exercise.

This coincided with my 24 hr urinary cortisol staying at about 150% of the normal range.

I abruptly lost the ability to translate fast, and it took me an hour to even count the number of characters in a set of Word documents sent for translation.

Only starting on escitalopram (an SSRI) in September 2018 returned me to a workable condition, and I could translate again at a speed of about 60% of the pre-20 April 2018.

Robusto

03:48

That's a damn shame.

CowperKettle

And in November 2020, I started having a heavy feeling after each meal in the left part of my abdomen, and again lost the ability to translate fast, this time for good.

And I start having rumination and despondency after about 20 min of running or about 3 hours of bicycling.

I should try listening to audiobooks while cycling, in one ear, of course, to avoid being hit by a car.

alphabet

04:05

@CowperKettle I'm definitely not qualified to give medical advice, but that does sound like chronic fatigue syndrome.

CowperKettle

@alphabet Yes, but it went away on escitalopram

And again it went away when I added methylfolate to my antidepressant in the fall of 2023

Something odd is happening.

So I can now perform manual work, but not mental - my brain gets distracted and exhausted

I have this odd area of gliosis in my brainstem, I wonder if it affects my thinking in any way, and I wonder how it first appeared there.

I've read up some PubMed, and it seems that it might be the result of an ischemic stroke, or a major trauma, like hitting one's head heavily, or a very rare glioma, since it has not increased in volume since Feb 2010.

A glioma usually grows.

Local neurologists just tell nothing.

Vikas

04:55

@CowperKettle I don't know much about animals but I've heard cats like to be treated as kings.

CowperKettle

08:00

Has Social Media Fuelled a Teen-Suicide Crisis? - by Andrew Solomon, in New Yorker

CowperKettle

08:53

CowperKettle

10:07

Araucaria - Him

Any chance of a reopen vote here folks?

0

Q: What type of infinitival clause is “... to turn back” in "It was impossible to turn back"?

The sentence is: It was impossible to turn back. What type of infinitival clause is this? What is its syntactic function and what are its other grammatical attributes? Is it the complement of the adjective impossible?

CowperKettle

10:57

tchrist

> One memorable section on the queen’s pronunciation includes a mimic’s guide to capturing it correctly. Brown notes that her way of speaking evolved. While as a young woman Elizabeth rhymed “had” with “bed” and “home” with “tame,” by old age her accent resembled speakers “younger and/or lower in the social hierarchy.” She never, however, stopped saying “orf” for “off.”

@Robusto Nine years in prison the judge gave Tina Peters. Finally!

CowperKettle

King Willonius - They’re Eating The Dogs [Official Audio]

►

tchrist

11:19

@CowperKettle Coney dogs and skat cats.

CowperKettle

11:36

2010 Filair Let L-410 crash

On 25 August 2010, a Let L-410 Turbolet passenger aircraft of Filair crashed on approach to Bandundu Airport in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, killing all but one of the 21 people on board. The accident was reportedly the result of the occupants rushing to the front of the aircraft to escape from a crocodile smuggled on board by one of the passengers. The move compromised the aircraft's balance to the point that control of the aircraft was lost. == Accident == The aircraft was operating a round-robin domestic flight from Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, stopping at Kiri, Bokoro...

The only case of plane crash caused by a crocodile

tchrist

> In the land where the crocodiles smile,
They bask by the banks of the Nile.
With a splash and a grin,
They invite you to swim,
But beware of their toothy style!

CowperKettle

A crocodile in denial

tchrist

> Higgledy-piggledy,
Crocodile slumbering,
Lazing in sunlight,
Basking so free.

Wiggling and wriggling,
Under the water’s sheen,
Napping and dreaming,
Life’s a grand spree!

jlliagre

12:18

French dad's joke: Q: Quelle est la différence entre un crocodile et un alligator ? R: C'est caïman pareil.

tchrist

> Higgledy-piggledy
Gharials perilous
Lurk in still waters to
wait for their prey.

Gharials querulous
Incomprehensibly
Seize careless humans who
swim at midday.

> Bumpity-thumpity
All the green gators glide
Slithering silently
Gnoshing on prey.

Sunbathing lazily
Scales like a fortress by
foul swampy waters to
Rule night and day.

Okay, we've exhausted the crocodilians now. :)

Ryder is not Rude.

I only counted 14 "numbers."

tchrist

@RyderisnotRude. Yes, there were not many.

14/42 = 1/3

Ryder is not Rude.

It reads more like a meme to me.

tchrist

Makes a nice postcard.

Ryder is not Rude.

12:29

Yup.

CowperKettle

12:40

Robusto

@tchrist Good.

Ryder is not Rude.

RIP

Robusto

13:12

Wordle 1,203 5/6

⬛⬛⬛🟨🟨
⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛
⬛⬛🟨🟨🟩
🟨🟩🟩⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

#travle #660 +0
🟩✅✅
https://travle.earth

MetaEd

@CowperKettle Take my money.

Robusto

13:34

#WhenTaken #220 (04.10.2024)

I scored 713/1000 🎉

1️⃣ 📍 966 km - 🗓️ 4 yrs - ⚡ 167 / 200
2️⃣ 📍 4307 km - 🗓️ 14 yrs - ⚡ 100 / 200
3️⃣ 📍 140.2 metres - 🗓️ 2 yrs - ⚡ 198 / 200
4️⃣ 📍 5005 km - 🗓️ 5 yrs - ⚡ 115 / 200
5️⃣ 📍 3193 km - 🗓️ 5 yrs - ⚡ 133 / 200

https://whentaken.com

Conrado

13:55

-1

Q: Synonym for "amalgamate"

What would be the right synonym for to amalgamate? The context is a meteorological one: When clouds amalgamate,...

synonyms

When I get my spurs, I promise to vote to close this sort of question as "answerable by consulting a dictionary of synonyms".

I gave the new user speech, then saw that the user has several posts and has already been on the stack for a year.

That is unnecessary wear and tear on my keyboard.

jlliagre

14:20

#WhenTaken #220 (04.10.2024)

I scored 789/1000 🎉

1️⃣ 📍 876 km - 🗓️ 0 yrs - ⚡ 174 / 200
2️⃣ 📍 15964 km - 🗓️ 5 yrs - ⚡ 95 / 200
3️⃣ 📍 110.1 metres - 🗓️ 4 yrs - ⚡ 196 / 200
4️⃣ 📍 2 km - 🗓️ 3 yrs - ⚡ 197 / 200
5️⃣ 📍 3955 km - 🗓️ 3 yrs - ⚡ 127 / 200

https://whentaken.com

@Robusto Both of us were closer than that on #3.

#travle #660 +0 (Perfect)
✅✅✅
https://travle.earth

Wordle 1,203 5/6

⬛⬛🟨⬛🟨
⬛⬛🟨⬛⬛
🟨🟨⬛🟨⬛
🟨⬛🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Mitch

15:51

@Vikas Devs gaining little from AI

> A study measured the performance of 800 developers before and after getting GitHub's Copilot.

It found:

- No change in productivity
- No change in burnout levels
- A 41% increase in the bug rate!??

2

(summary from a tweet)

Cerberus

How does one measure 'burnout levels'?

I am sceptical.

GPT can be a quick way to copy-paste stuff from Stack Overflow.

Vikas

16:07

@Mitch Good

Mitch

16:51

@Cerberus That's not really how it works. ChatGPT may have used SO in its training data, but the code it might return to you with an appropriate prompt, is not necessarily a verbatim cut-n-paste (though it will likely be very similar)

Cerberus

@Mitch Of course I know that.

We all know the basics of how it works.

Mitch

@Cerberus Sure, in general burnout is kind of nebulous. I didn't look at the original paper to see if they asked 'Are you burnt out? (scale from 1 to 10)' or some more subtly worded questions for signs of some more quantifiable thing we usually label burnout.

Cerberus

Right.

Mitch

@Vikas I think the article linked (not the original research paper) explains that you can't just trust Copilot blindly, that you have to use judgement.

Cerberus

17:07

Of course.

Vikas

@Mitch Yup. Whenever I use it to search something that Google doesn't show, I cross check the results by clicking the references it provides.

CowperKettle

Cerberus

That changed quickly.

Holland is also yellow.

And I think probably Flanders as well.

Conrado

I am also yellow in this respect.

Cerberus

Hmm I think you spoke Spanish?

Conrado

17:21

Yes. English is my first language, but I have lived most of my life in S. America.

Is "in this respect" strange in English?

It felt a little funny after I wrote it.

Lambie

That spelk is a new one for me. Rhymes with whelk, for the poets out there...

@Conrado Not really, though I would have said that and not this. That map. Yeah?

Conrado

"En este sentido" is what I meant.

Ah

Yes.

Lambie

Also, in that sense, we can also say for en este sentido...

Cerberus

@Conrado Ahh I see.

Conrado

The that-this spectrum: I have become lost on it. I remember as a child when I lived in the USA, a Hungarian friend who taught me to play chess. I pitied him because he struggled with what seemed, to me, an obvious intuitive concept.

I have become him, now.

:)

Cerberus

17:26

@Conrado Sounds good to me.

@Conrado It is often pretty free.

Lambie

Yeah, this and that is obvious for actual stuff (as in pointing at something) but is harder as discourse reference. So, I might say "in this sense" to refer to something I'm saying now but in "that sense" for something not in my own speech. But, it can be tricky.

And there's also, in the sense of [something]. Oh well, deictics will, it is hoped, not signal end-times.

alphabet

17:42

Israel’s ‘Mission Accomplished’ Moment in the Middle East

tchrist

@Lambie I find it sillily hard to remember to pronounce that "ei" in deictics like it's German rather than like it's anything else. :)

I guess I should more time in Lisbon, where their "ei" is becoming "ai".

Cerberus

Also in lower-class Dutch or formerly-Frisian areas.

Robusto

18:34

@CowperKettle The normative influence of mass media, no doubt.

Robusto

18:47

Daily Octordle #984
7️⃣9️⃣
5️⃣3️⃣
🕛8️⃣
🔟4️⃣
Score: 58

Daily Sequence Octordle #984
5️⃣6️⃣
7️⃣8️⃣
9️⃣🔟
🕚🕛
Score: 68

@jlliagre What do you mean?

Tightrope, a daily trivia game | Britannica

Oct. 4, 2024

T I G H T R O P E
✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ 🎉

My Score: 2350

SmokeDetector

19:36

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive title detected, potentially bad keyword in title (57): (potentially offensive title -- see MS for details)‭ by Chris G.‭ on english.SE

GratefulDisciple

20:05

@Conrado Don't ask me why, but I immediately thought of a Dental context. Maybe because I have a lot of fillings in my teeth 🙁.

Conrado

20:33

I recently spent a day working for a gentleman who used to work in the gold mines. He showed me a bottle of mercury. It is often found in the same ore as gold. They bake the ore in an evacuated oven, and at a certain temperature when the mercury is vaporized, the pipe it off and distill it.

Apparently if you roll a drop of it around on your hand (as he did to show me), and it touches anything made of gold (like a ring that you might have on a finger), it immediately begins mixing, and the gold begins to turn white right away where it touches!

jlliagre

21:06

@Robusto I mean a picture of a bridge taken from the shore at a distance can't have been taken from the bridge itself. I thought you tried to pick the approximate location of the photographer like I did. It's still a 100 but I like to be as close as possible to the real spot, like a few meters or tenth of meters.

By the way splinter is écharde in French. It cognates with 'shard'.

GratefulDisciple

@Conrado So we would call that gold amalgam? Several dentists I visited over the years typically point to me that the old style silver-mercury amalgam / alloy is not safe, because of the toxicity of the amalgam's mercury, esp. for children and pregnant women. So they scare me into replacing older about-to-fail fillings with non-metal ones and made money off me.

jlliagre

Tightrope, a daily trivia game | Britannica

Oct. 4, 2024

T I G H T R O P E
✅ ✅ 💔 💔 ✅ 💔 ⎵ ⎵ ⎵ 🤕

My Score: 650

Robusto

21:40

@jlliagre Yeah, I'm never sure about what they're looking for. Rule of thumb: 100 score means close enough!

jlliagre

22:37

Daily Octordle #984
5️⃣6️⃣
7️⃣8️⃣
9️⃣🔟
3️⃣🕚
Score: 59

Daily Sequence Octordle #984
4️⃣5️⃣
7️⃣9️⃣
🔟🕚
🕛🕐
Score: 71

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…