English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Robusto

00:30

Strands #303
“Resolutions”
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Robusto

01:25

Final Word of the Year: democracy If you don't know what it is, you're likely living in hell. If you do know what it is, you will surely miss it if it's gone.

CowperKettle

01:58

@Robusto I watched a documentary that explained this word

Unanswered Oddities - Episode 6: Democracy

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@Robusto It will never be fully gone, there will be some collateralization

Cerberus

02:50

Connections
Puzzle #570
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Happy New Year!

tchrist

03:02

MMXXV lacks but four hours to go here. I have no idea how to write 45² in something like a Roman notation. And yes, I know the Roman year has a different starting point.

pridie Kalendas Ianuarias MMDCCLXXVIII AUC

Kinda pretty.

Y = (VL)²
Y = (L - V)²
Y = L² - 2LV + V²
Y = 50² - 2·50·5 + 5²
Y = 2500 - 500 + 25
Y = 2025

Unfortunately, algebra wasn't invented until the 9th century, and in Persia.

blames @M.A.R. for my bad math

Cerberus

You still know your high-school mathematics!

tchrist

My great-uncle was rattling off the binomial formula for me at dinner last Sunday. :)

So he, too, still remembers.

Cerberus

What formula is that?

You still have a great-uncle?

How old is he?

tchrist

03:17

Two and ninety.

He said how he still remembers that things like (a + b)² are a² + 2ab + b².

Cerberus

Oh, I didn't know the term.

tchrist

Y2K seems like only yesterday. But in those 25 years I have gone from a young man to an old one. Sum quod eris, and sooner than that.

Cerberus

I am surprised that two generations should come between you and ninety-two.

tchrist

Opposite birth ranks.

Cerberus

Far!

tchrist

03:26

I am the eldest of the eldest; he was the youngest.

I make sure to walk seven miles every single day without fail, even when it's bitter cold, albeit often in two journeys. It will keep me going for a little while longer.

It was 18 degrees this morning at 6am when I took my first walk; it was 54 degrees only two days ago. But there is no snow on the ground so it is easy.

Cerberus

Healthy.

So you still have, what, forty years ahead of you in good health, I hope.

tchrist

Probably not.

Probably twenty in good shape, perhaps thirty in some shape.

Cerberus

Why not forty?

tchrist

Jimmy Carter did not look very good this past year.

Cerberus

How old was he, and how many years were there between you?

tchrist

03:32

I am exactly twenty years your senior but for six days.

He died at one hundred this past Sunday.

Cerberus

Well, then why couldn't you have forty years ahead of you.

Or fifty.

tchrist

Because almost no one does.

Cerberus

You were half his age.

tchrist

You seem to be off by a decade, and change.

Cerberus

Oh, sorry, I read ten years older.

You look much younger.

tchrist

03:34

It's because I walk.

That's all.

Cerberus

Thirty more years, then.

tchrist

And thank you.

Cerberus

I don't walk.

tchrist

You don't show your face to the daystar.

Cerberus

Hell, no.

tchrist

03:35

You'll see how it is. Everyone does.

Cerberus

I avoid the dog star's days.

tchrist

Siriusly.

Cerberus

Quite.

Close the curtains.

Incidentally, this evening I was with a fifty-eight-year old whom I would have given forty-five.

tchrist

When you watch someone move, just walking across the room or across the yard, you get a good feel for how stable and strong they are. I know people my age who barely totter. I know people my age who are dead. I don't know many who walk seven miles every single day. But I know some.

Cerberus

And last night with a 33-year-old and a 38-year old each of whom I would have given the other's age.

tchrist

03:39

Busy life, yours.

Cerberus

I bet you totter not.

tchrist

I do not.

Cerberus

Late December is always a very busy time.

tchrist

I took my first high or steep hike yesterday since my right knee complained too much about doing it daily a few months back in early autumn. I've been babying it since. It was ok.

Cerberus

Being careful seems wise.

tchrist

03:43

My uncle, not my great uncle, has to get a partial knee replacement. He has always walked miles a day, and he still moves with determined purpose. But he's worn one out. He's not very happy about all of that, but he's a doctor and will do what he needs to do.

Cerberus

How good will the result be?

tchrist

On verra.

Cerberus

My mother walked quite some distance on uneven terrain and on her new hip, at Christmas.

tchrist

He has access to the very best of care.

Oh my.

Cerberus

Well, she got it 11 months ago.

tchrist

03:45

My grandfather got a new hip at 87 and walked on it for five more years. But my neighbor got one at 81 and it just never really worked out for him.

My uncle has been struggling to get his pulse up exercising on things that his knee can tolerate because they aren't weight bearing. I forget all the various equipment he's using for it right now. He knows better than to just sit around and do nothing and lose function while he's waiting to get the partial replacement.

Cerberus

@tchrist That is unfortunate for your neighbour.

My mother was 76.

@tchrist Yes, I hear that muscular loss can be a serious issue at that age.

tchrist

Oh I'm sure she'll do fine. I know a woman who had them both done at 74, a couple years ago, and she could not be happier. She is very active.

My uncle is seventeen and half years my senior.

When I was a kid, he used to work at the state park in town as a ranger when he came home from college for summer break when I very very young. He would take me on walks and show me things. And he developed black and white photographs in his own makeshift dark room underneath grandpa and grandma's staircase. I don't remember it but his bedroom was my first bedroom before I can remember it.

I have come to appreciate being able to walk with a red headlamp so I keep my night vision. It reminds me of his darkroom.

Cerberus

@tchrist Both!

tchrist

@Cerberus Yes. She was very brave.

Cerberus

@tchrist Can you explain this?

tchrist

03:57

And the new stuff that they use doesn't fall apart in five or ten years. It should be good for a lifetime. I asked my knee doctor about this when one of mine was annoying me this past autumn. It's not like I'm "due" for one; I just wanted to understand the technology. I may walk on this for decades more, because I do have a lot of muscle supporting it.

@Cerberus Yes: if you use white light, you destroy your scotopic vision. If you use red light, you do not. Same with black-and-white film stock.

After you've been in the dark for a half hour or so, there are chemical changes in your eye that switch over what you can see and how you can see it.

Anything higher in frequency than red ruins it, though.

Adaptation (eye)

In visual physiology, adaptation is the ability of the retina of the eye to adjust to various levels of light. Natural night vision, or scotopic vision, is the ability to see under low-light conditions. In humans, rod cells are exclusively responsible for night vision as cone cells are only able to function at higher illumination levels. Night vision is of lower quality than day vision because it is limited in resolution and colors cannot be discerned; only shades of gray are seen. In order for humans to transition from day to night vision they must undergo a dark adaptation period of up to two...

> Because rod cells are insensitive to long wavelengths, the use of red lights and red lens glasses has become a common practice for accelerating dark adaptation

> The insensitivity to red light will prevent the rod cells from further becoming bleached and allow for the rhodopsin photopigment to recharge back to its active conformation.[29] Once an individual enters a dark setting most of their rod cells will already be accommodated to the dark and be able to transmit visual signals to the brain without an accommodation period.

We just had our black moon, you know.

Second new moon of the month.

cbsnews.com/news/black-moon-december-2024

> December is coming to an end with a "black moon" on Monday night, Dec. 30, but those hoping to see the phenomenon will be out of luck.

That's because a black moon is the term for the second new moon to fall in a single calendar month, and new moons appear invisible to the naked eye from Earth. While new moons happen throughout the year, two new moons only fall in a single calendar month about once every 29 months, according to the Old Farmer's Almanac.

I live in a dark area. There are no lights where I walk. I can see the Via Lactea from my back porch if the house lights are off, and better if I walk back into the hills.

It's too cold for bears. I keep my eyes out for lions. They just had to put one down in the next town north of me because it ate two goats.

I wouldn't see the lion, I'm sure. I didn't see it the last time, not until it growled at me. So mostly I avoid being places where one could jump out at me. But there are lots of deer here that are easier pray.

I like the Galactica spelling but Lactea was more common.

That was this morning at 6:27am, an hour before sunrise. Just a cellphone snapshot but you can still see stars.

It's a stacked image of ten half-second exposures at f/1.8, and quite "processed".

So five minutes into what they call "astronomical twilight".

Cerberus

04:21

@tchrist A lifetime is a bit more optimistic than what I have heard.

@tchrist Oh, I had not heard of this.

I know about astronomical night. Some nights, it does not occur here.

tchrist

@Cerberus That depends how old you are. :)

If you can put it off until your seventies, and take it easy, they should last the rest of your life.

> A recent meta-analysis published in The Lancet has shown that 82% of total knee replacements and 72% of unicompartmental knee replacements last over 25 years.

I wonder whether they'll set off fireworks at the lake at midnight this year.

Cerberus

04:36

@tchrist Wouldn't a lifetime the time a person lives?

In context, it may mean the rest of one's lifetime, but of course I ignore context.

tchrist

@Cerberus It doesn't as usually last for young men, per the article. But someone in their 70s has a good chance of it lasting over 25 years. I think the young guys are too rough on it.

And that first sentence does not parse right in English, but I am too tired to figure out how to fix it.

> The lifetime risk of revision for patients over the age of 70 at the time of primary knee replacement is 5% but these rates are as high as 35% for young males. 12 Many knee replacements will therefore be revised in the lifetime of the recipient.

Cerberus

Only 35%.

tchrist

It's a very hard recovery, as I'm sure you are quite aware by now.

Cerberus

Very hard?

It just takes quite a bit of time.

The operation of replacement, you mean, don't you?

tchrist

Yes.

It takes a long time. Many months.

Cerberus

04:43

Yes, a few.

tchrist

And it is hardly without pain at first.

Cerberus

My mother wasn't super clear on her progress.

I don't think she complained about pain too much.

tchrist

I'm very glad that she is doing better.

Cerberus

But it is not like, pop in a new one and you can walk normally the next day.

tchrist

She's Dutch. Why would she complain about pain? :) Or is that only Scandinavians?

Cerberus

04:45

Perhaps the Dutch are less dramatic than Mediterraneans?

tchrist

Northerners in general, it is said. But how much is true I can't say. I do know that there's a stereotype where I'm from that the Scandinavian farmers from Minnesota and Wisconsin just soldier on without as much complaint as one would expect from them.

Cerberus

And the Slavs?

tchrist

Don't know.

The Dutch are considered cool tempered though.

Cerberus

They are, but also direct.

tchrist

Of course on a personal level that's silly. Everybody will know many people of varying natures.

Cerberus

04:49

But, yes, complaining about discomforts is not Calvinist du tout.

tchrist

Exactly.

Cerberus

So a traditional Dutch nobleman or labourer would not.

tchrist

I certainly never heard complaints from the elders from my Danish side, nor really from the English side either. I had some great aunts and uncles who were born in Denmark whom I knew.

Not much left of the old farms, though. I think we still have one family farm in the southwest of Wisconsin run by my second cousins, ones from the English pioneer branch of my maternal grandmother, not the English patrician branch of my maternal grandfather.

Cerberus

Oh, you have farmers in your family, interesting.

tchrist

My maternal grandmother's maternal grandfather came to Wisconsin in a covered wagon. He lived with them after his wife passed away.

And he told many pioneering tales.

His surname was Storer.

It's one of those very old occupational names that came out of the Middle Ages.

This is the patrician branch's origin on this side of the Atlantic, and beyond.

So immigrants from the 17th and 18th centuries on my mother's side, and the 19th and 20th on my father's.

Thomas Halsey (1591–1679)

Thomas Halsey (1591/2 – 1678/9) was born 2 January 1591/2 in Hertfordshire, England and died 27 August 1678 in Southampton, New York. He emigrated from England in 1633 to New England, and eventually co-founded, with Edmond Farrington, Edmund Needham, Abraham Pierson the Elder, Thomas Sayre, Josiah Stanborough, George Welbe, Henry Walton, Job Sayre, and Edward Howell, the town of Southampton, New York in 1640. == Ancestry == The earliest Englishman bearing the name "Halsey" lived in the western end of Cornwall. The home of the Cornish Halseys was a manor of Lanesley. According to Halsey's Thomas...

They kept reusing the same small set of first names for centuries and centuries and centuries and centuries and centuries.

MetaEd

05:10

🎉🎆🥂

tchrist

Zapompaign?

Lion put down yesterday near here. It was eating goats instead of deer, so people were worried. The one in California was much, much worse.

> Under current Colorado law, mountain lions are managed as big game, meaning CPW is responsible for using agency funds to reimburse landowners for the death of the livestock. CPW said annual calendar year lion damage payments averaged around $50,000 in the last three years.

A 90-pound lion can easily kill a man. A 200-pound lion easier still.

Well, puma. But you know.

These are basically leopards in size class. Very, very, very strong. And fast.

They're next after the jaguar in size.

Leopards tend to be a little smaller, but both are perfectly lethal.

Cerberus

05:57

@tchrist Not bad at all.

So how far back can you trace your ancestry reliably?

tchrist

06:37

@Cerberus Something like 18 generations. It's been a while since I tried to figure it out. You have to go back through that guy to Hertfordshire, and keep going.

Cerberus

What year?

tchrist

1455

Cerberus

That must be pretty far, in your country.

tchrist

Well that wasn't in this country. :)

Cerberus

The tracing is done by you in your country!

tchrist

06:41

Well yes.

Cerberus

So how many people do you know in your country who can go that far back?

tchrist

Oh I have no idea. I'm sure I've never ever asked anyone! Never occurred to me.

Also, I presume you mean people I'm not related to. :)

Cerberus

Yes.

tchrist

I should ask my dad's eldest brother about what he learned when he was living in Denmark doing some postdoc work. He connected with his second cousins and such who were all living there. I can trace back ancestors only as far as the Atlantic in the other lines, whether that's Denmark or Germany or France. But I know there's a hardcover genealogy of my maternal grandmother's father's family leading back to France, and I know my paternal grandmother's father came over from Germany.

Cerberus

One can only know so many quarters.

tchrist

06:50

I don't know that there are good records of either of my grandmothers' mothers' lines. I know they were both mostly English but pioneers and farmers, not landed gentry. Their families actually knew each other when they were children.

Cerberus

Different classes easily mixed in the new land?

tchrist

That 1455 number is just one that's very easily accessible. The Wikipedia page mentions that this is the same family as mentioned as "de Als" (then Hals, then Halsey) living in the time of Richard I, 1189. There may be linkage there one could discover.

Cerberus

Right, but the Central Bureau of Genealogy here only accepts registrations that it considers proven.

tchrist

@Cerberus Yes and no. My grandparents eloped because his step-mother thought that a farmer's daughter had no business marrying a physician's son. That forced my grandfather to drop out of university to raise a family.

Cerberus

Always the step-mother.

tchrist

06:58

My great-uncle has nothing good to say of her. She basically kicked him out of the house when his dad died.

Which is how he landed in the navy for the Korean War.

But his dad's brother and sister were both university professors who helped support him early on, and my later grandfather's family of five kids as well: that's why all the next generation still got to go to university and beyond, three to doctorates and masters degrees.

His dad's brother and sister lived here in Colorado for a time. She was a professor here at Boulder. They eventually retired to California.

So that's why my great-uncle still lives here.

They both wrote books. But that's normal for university professors, I suppose. The physician did not.

My own uncle the physician lived in Denver on three separate occasions, although never when I have lived here. I always so resented that he moved out here so far from home when I was little.

Cerberus

Understandable.

tchrist

Yes, people were shooting off fireworks at midnight somewhere here.

> The Halsey family came to New York from England in 1637, and Richard's grandfather, Rufus Henry Halsey, brought the family to Oshkosh, where he served as president of the normal school, now University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.

Academics.

That should have been capitalized as Normal School, which was a thing.

The Oshkosh Normal School became the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh.

An 1871 photograph of the main school building at the time. It perished in flames in 1915.

Cerberus

07:15

That is tall for a building in the country!

tchrist

Well, it was in the town.

Not out in the country, so to speak.

> The population of Oshkosh, Wisconsin in the 1800s was as follows:
1860: 6,086
1870: 12,663, a 108.1% increase from 1860
1880: 15,748, a 24.4% increase from 1870
1890: 22,836, a 45.0% increase from 1880
Why Oshkosh - Greater Oshkosh
Oshkosh was incorporated as a city in 1853 with a population of 2,500. The area was home to more than 100 people by 1840, and the villages of Brooklyn and Athens merged to form Oshkosh. The city was named after a Menominee chief who lived from 1795–1858

Cerberus

Still seems tall for a small town!

tchrist

Yes.

It is now a big city of 66,816 as of the last census.

Cerberus

You must have lived in bigger cities.

tchrist

I have lived in Madison and Madrid and Dallas and London.

And Boulder, all of which exceed that in size.

Cerberus

07:19

Slightly bigger.

tchrist

Madison has 280k, the only other major city in Wisconsin apart from Milwaukee which is huge and sprawling.

Milwaukee has ~550k now and the metro area ~1.4M. Boulder has ~100k and distant Denver ~700k with the entire metro area ~3M. Still insignificant compared with Madrid or London.

Dallas has 1.3M and the Dallas–Ft Worth metro area something insane like 8M.

And yet today I live in what is called a rural area, despite being within the city limits.

Walking distance to stores and public transport, the bus downtown.

But I can see the Milky Way, which I like. Well, when it gets here. It won't be here until February etc etc.

Damn it they're still shooting off fireworks somewhere. Go to bed!

Rural enough to have deer and bobcats (Lynx rufus) and foxes and coyotes and pumas and bears. I see deer every single day, usually up very very close.

What I do not have is elk or moose. Now and then one of those will stray into town, but they aren't resident at my elevation.

You can find plenty of them up higher in the county.

No wolves yet on this side of the Continental Divide.

We don't have many of the larger of the two lynxes (L. canadiensis) in Colorado because they need snowshoe hares all the time, but the highest parts of the county are a proposed reintroduction area for them. There are only 150-250 of them in Colorado today.

They aren't generalists like bobcats. They really only eat hares.

And the sizes do overlap. It's just that on average L. canadiensis tends to be larger than L. rufus.

Cerberus

07:35

Lots of beasts!

Now I sleep, adieu.

tchrist

River otters were photographed in the city limits here a couple years for the first time in more than a century. The fur-trapping industry decimated so much wildlife.

Me too, good night.

think_meaning_buildß

cya 👋

Xanne

08:32

Connections
Puzzle #570
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CowperKettle

09:05

Beautiful Ohio

"Beautiful Ohio" is the regional anthem of the U.S. state of Ohio, adopted in 1969 as the official state song. == History == The first lyrics were written in 1918 by Ballard MacDonald and the music by Robert A. "Bobo" King, who used the pseudonym Mary Earl. The melody is partly based on "Song of India" by Rimsky-Korsakov and "Beautiful Dreamer" by Stephen Foster. The original 1918 publication also featured a second obbligato voice, using the tune "Love's Old Sweet Song". A bill passed by the Ohio General Assembly in 1969 made it the state's official song, and in 1989 adopted an amendment to section...

CowperKettle

11:51

CowperKettle

12:26

> Concern for her own health together with the anguish of her husband's being in the resistance against the German troops and her children in occupied France was hard to bear.[16] She did make several dangerous visits back to France, enduring detention by German troops at the Swiss border on more than one occasion.

Amazing. Hard to imagine someone gathering strength to cross into an area occupied by the Nazi Germany

Irène Joliot-Curie

Irène Joliot-Curie (French: [iʁɛn ʒɔljo kyʁi] ; née Curie; 12 September 1897 – 17 March 1956) was a French chemist and physicist who received the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with her husband, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, for their discovery of induced radioactivity. They were the second married couple, after her parents, to win the Nobel Prize, adding to the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. This made the Curies the family with the most Nobel laureates to date. Her mother Marie Skłodowska–Curie and herself also form the only mother–daughter pair to have won Nobel Prizes whilst Pierre and Irène...

jlliagre

14:21

Bonne année à tous !

3

Robusto

Happy New Year to you too!

And to everyone else in this chat, and elsewhere.

Vikas

HAPPY 2025

Robusto

14:34

あけましておめでとう!

3

CowperKettle

> - Honey, I've got two stripes
- So, you are.. a junior sergeant?

"Two lines" or "two stripes" means "pregnant". Pregnancy tests have two lines activated when you're pregnant.

A junior sergeant has a shoulder board with two stripes in the Russian army

Robusto

@CowperKettle A two-striper in English is a corporal.

CowperKettle

@Robusto Nice!

Robusto

#travle #749 +0 (Perfect)
✅✅✅✅✅
https://travle.earth

Vikas

नए साल की शुभकामनाएँ!

3

CowperKettle

14:47

Robusto

#WhenTaken #309 (01.01.2025)

I scored 789/1000🏅

1️⃣📍4.3K km - 🗓️1 yrs - 🥈126/200
2️⃣📍632 km - 🗓️3 yrs - 🥇178/200
3️⃣📍6.7K km - 🗓️0 yrs - 🥉113/200
4️⃣📍261 m - 🗓️3 yrs - 🥇197/200
5️⃣📍748 km - 🗓️3 yrs - 🥇175/200

https://whentaken.com

CowperKettle

My washing machine has a wi-fi connection, which I've never tried out and never intend to. I wonder why it's there in the first place.

> This day, Time winds th’ exhausted chain;
To run the twelvemonth’s length again:
I see, the old bald-pated fellow,
With ardent eyes, complexion sallow,
Adjust the unimpair’d machine,
To wheel the equal, dull routine

Burns' famous lines on the washing machine.

tchrist

Time winds blow ever onwards.

CowperKettle

jlliagre

#WhenTaken #309 (01.01.2025)

I scored 888/1000🏆

1️⃣📍1.3K km - 🗓️9 yrs - 🥈150/200
2️⃣📍743 km - 🗓️6 yrs - 🥈171/200
3️⃣📍306 m - 🗓️5 yrs - 🥇195/200
4️⃣📍88.7 m - 🗓️5 yrs - 🥇195/200
5️⃣📍739 km - 🗓️1 yrs - 🥇177/200

https://whentaken.com

tchrist

15:00

Yesterday's article: If you think 2024 dragged on, consider the Annus Confusionis that finally saw the end of the heisenmonth of Mercedonius, once and for all.

Damn the pontiffs, full speed ahead!

A year with fifteen months in it.

CowperKettle

Cool.

tchrist

Mercedonius

Mercedonius (Latin for "Work Month"), also known as Mercedinus, Interkalaris or Intercalaris (Latin: mensis intercalaris), was the intercalary month of the Roman calendar. The resulting leap year was either 377 or 378 days long. It theoretically occurred every two (or occasionally three) years, but was sometimes avoided or employed by the Roman pontiffs for political reasons regardless of the state of the solar year. Mercedonius was eliminated by Julius Caesar when he introduced the Julian calendar in 45 BC. == History == This month, instituted according to Roman tradition by Numa Pompilius, was...

> All Roman month names began as adjectives modifying the explicit or implicit word "month" (Latin: mensis) before beginning to be treated as nouns in their own right. Mercedonius seems to derive from merces, meaning "wages".

Not related to Mercedes. :)

More like mercenary.

> Some recent authors have reported the names "Undecember" and "Duodecember" for the two intercalary months inserted between November and December upon the adoption of the Julian calendar in 44 BC, including the World Calendar Association[3] and Isaac Asimov.[4] This claim has no contemporary evidence; Cicero refers to the months as "intercalates prior and intercalates posterior" in his letters.[5]

Smart money's on Cicero, as always.

I rather like the apocryphal Undecember and Duodecember, though.

jlliagre

@CowperKettle My new dishwasher has wifi. I find it more convenient than I expected.

tchrist

reboots jll's dishwasher from afar

jlliagre

@tchrist Didn't work :-)

CowperKettle

15:16

> “Don’t look! But that’s my wife outside the restaurant”
“What!? Your profile said you were a ‘single dad!’
“Yes, of course. We're a one dad family"

tchrist

@CowperKettle I know a family whose kids have two dads and a mom all living with them. Made child care much easier. Also home maintenance issues. :)

CowperKettle

Nice!

Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky lived together with Lilya Brik, his muse and lover, and her husband.

Their photo in 1929

I only learned of this about 10 years ago. We were taught his poems in school, but of course nobody mentions this fact.

Robusto

16:05

@jlliagre There are many apps out there today that encumber you with help. At my house, we load the dishwasher, dial up the cycle, and just forget about it.

MetaEd

Wordle 1,292 3/6

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Strands #304
“What a workout”
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Connections
Puzzle #570
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Robusto

Wordle 1,292 3/6

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Strands #304
“What a workout”
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Connections
Puzzle #570
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Robusto

16:28

Daily Octordle #1073
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Score: 63

Daily Sequence Octordle #1073
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Score: 52

New record for me on Sequence Octordle.

That's called "getting lucky."

Tightrope, a daily trivia game | Britannica

Jan. 1, 2025

T I G H T R O P E
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My Score: 1880

M.A.R.

@tchrist we knew that one day, someone might try to say 2025 using Roman numerals, so designed algebra in a way to mess with them

Happy new year folks!

Robusto

@M.A.R. Can you say that in Farsi, please?

M.A.R.

16:43

سال نو مبارک!

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Robusto

Thank you.

M.A.R.

@Robusto Farsi in ELU chat looks like termites have eaten through it

Oh, the starboard. Nice!

Robusto

Feliz año nuevo!

5

Now we have a Spanish one as well.

If anyone wants to, ahem, star that one, go right ahead.

Gracias

@CowperKettle You need to put up a Russian one too.

GratefulDisciple

Connections
Puzzle #570
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@jlliagre Yup mine too; more convenient to adjust settings from the app than using the minimalistic button-based interface which is form over function. Though now I have to be mindful of IoT security issue. I guess I have to trust the app wouldn't betray me, and that I need to have a router with up to date intrusion detection signatures as an added measure so the dishwasher doesn't turn into an unwitting trojan horse.

CowperKettle

17:05

С Новым Годом!

4

GratefulDisciple

@jlliagre I use app-based router & wifi mesh too, which gives me warning when an unrecognized device joins the Wi-fi network. After I label every MAC address, it's quite nice to see a census of online and offline devices from the app, as well as when a device does port scan (which is labelled potentially dangerous).

@Robusto Selamat Tahun Baru!

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Robusto

Got ya covered.

Happy New Year!

3

Now we have one in English ^_^

GratefulDisciple

How about old English, I'll let @Cerberus does it in Latin.

Robusto

Hmm, I don't know if they ever said that in literature. And the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle wasn't so chatty.

GratefulDisciple

@Robusto I wonder whether they even celebrate new year or just the Winter solstice.

@Robusto Thanks.

Robusto

17:13

@GratefulDisciple Well, the new year was in March for them.

Mitch

@tchrist Time blows wind ever onwards.

GratefulDisciple

@Robusto We live in so different worlds. One thing I appreciate about this room: a watering hole where everyone is free to express one's convictions from lived experiences and learn from each other to broaden one's horizon, even bringing historical ones.

I wish every one here a better year ahead to pursue one's passions, to overcome at least one challenge, and to better understand one's worldview from the lens of another. If I have said something hurtful, please let me know so I won't do it again. Happy New Year!

Robusto

@GratefulDisciple Same to you.

tchrist

@GratefulDisciple Perhaps Novus annus ad omnes – MMXXV.

4

You'd want to find something legit from Perseus to be sure.

Robusto

It won't hurt to have illegit greetings.

We are a big tent in here.

Xanne

18:41

Strands #304
“What a workout”
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Cerberus

19:19

@GratefulDisciple I actually don't know whether the Romans had a customary salutations.

Just that they wouldn't have said it on this day!

CowperKettle

No Longer Human - Osamu Dazai

►

I never heard about this author before

think_meaning_buildß

21:28

@Robusto Could that make it a circus; of sorts?

ymmv

tchrist

21:40

Happy (3**2 * 5) ** 2 to the arithmetically oriented!

3 2 ** 5 * 2 ** Happy to the oriented Polish reverse arithmetically!

Or, perhaps, the parenthetically or precedentially challenged.

Definitely a presidentially challenged year.

They made us write a reverse-polish notation calculator for our last project in the required class on assembly language. Not a pretty sight.

Fortunately, we got to use the PDP-11 MACRO-11 assembler.

MACRO-11

MACRO-11 is an assembly language with macro facilities, designed for PDP-11 minicomputer family from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It is the successor to Program Assembler Loader (PAL-11R), an earlier version of the PDP-11 assembly language without macro facilities. MACRO-11 was supported on all DEC PDP-11 operating systems. PDP-11 Unix systems also include an assembler (named as), structurally similar to MACRO-11, but with different syntax and fewer features. The MACRO-11 assembler (and programs created by it) could also run under the RSX-11 compatibility mode of OpenVMS on VAX. =...

think_meaning_buildß

Were there any Polish students in the class to appreciate it.

tchrist

None were there.

think_meaning_buildß

What a waste.

tchrist

Technically, we used as on 2BSD IIRC.

Damn, I can't remember. We were forever bouncing between RT-11/RSX and 2BSD on the PDP-11s in those days.

think_meaning_buildß

1936 was the last perfect square.

tchrist

21:49

This was all in the pre-Orwellian epoch before 1984.

think_meaning_buildß

> It will probably be the only perfect square year you ever get to live in. The last time that occurred was in 1936. The next will be in 2116.

89 years between

tchrist

Dec 13, 2024 at 1:16, by tchrist

@think_meaning_buildß Next year will be a special year, only the third such in America's existence. Its previous such year was 88 years ago, and its first one was 175 years ago. What makes next year special in this way, and when will be the next such?

think_meaning_buildß

2116

tchrist

The reason that no AI engine ever gave the right answer is because I deliberately confused its very poor arithmetical skills. It was incapable of computing the answer from both the next year = 2025 perspective and the two "years ago" figures that were necessarily 2024 based occurring together in the same question. It always got messed up by this.

think_meaning_buildß

You know too much, sir.

tchrist

21:54

Like a candle wicked am I.

think_meaning_buildß

Quick as a wick you are.

This is the year it is hip to be square,

15 mins ago, by tchrist

Definitely a presidentially challenged year.

Just take the negative square root of it and be done with it.

The unprincipal root seems appropriate,

them felons are bound to be an unprincipaled bunch

no matter what they have to keep the radicals real

Cerberus

22:28

@tchrist The right answer to what?

think_meaning_buildß

37 mins ago, by tchrist

Dec 13, 2024 at 1:16, by tchrist

@think_meaning_buildß Next year will be a special year, only the third such in America's existence. Its previous such year was 88 years ago, and its first one was 175 years ago. What makes next year special in this way, and when will be the next such?

that^ question

Cerberus

@think_meaning_buildß Hmm....

I have no idea what is special about those years, but I know little about the history of the country.

think_meaning_buildß

45 squared = 2025

Cerberus

Oh...

think_meaning_buildß

44 squared = 1936

Cerberus

22:36

OK I get it now.

So "America" was a red herring.

think_meaning_buildß

1776 is the founding year

Cerberus

Still a red herring.

GPT produces nonsense still.

Don't even read it.

think_meaning_buildß

GTP helps develop skim reading skills

Cerberus

@GratefulDisciple OK will read.

2

Q: Did the Romans have any specific salutations comparable to Happy New Year?

One could literally translate a modern expression, like (Tibi sit) felix annus novus, but that is probably not what the Romans said. Aside from the fact that the new year would not usually begin now for the Romans, did they have some sort of salutation around the turn of the year? I think they ha...

M.A.R.

@Cerberus "let's see if they're divisible by 4. Hmm, guess not. That means the next one is 2114!" "Try again" "hmm, roses are red, violets are blue, the next such year is 2114!"

Robusto

22:54

@think_meaning_buildß I think we qualify on both counts.

Cerberus

@M.A.R. Yeah I didn't bother to follow its reasoning, it didn't seem to make sense and I saw some basic mistakes in the beginning, regarding reading comprehension.

think_meaning_buildß

@Robusto Indeed.

think_meaning_buildß

23:15

1 hour ago, by think_meaning_buildß

2116

HippoSawrUs

23:36

@Mitch I think it's a texture thing. I had a hand-me-down, red, white, and blue suede cross-body bag with fringes, in like new condition until I handled it too much. Smelled great too. These bags costing 1000s are crap. I was probably the coolest poor kid ever. Connections. That's all that really matters, having kind rich friends, and grandparents; that helps.

My grandmother was upset that we didn't want to learn to play the piano from her…from 4 or 5 years of age until 8 or 9, when she developed alzheimer's.

Until then, we thought we were rich kids. We had no idea.

Resolution: Back to basics this year; no TV. That's like giving up limp asparagus, or over-steamed broccoli, I know, but gone. No more crappy degraded things. We'll see.

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