English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

00:08

👀

HippoSawrUs

00:29

Hey, if a question is closed, it's not a question anymore. It's just a failed attempt at something. Nobody can answer that.

Happy New Year!

tchrist

01:27

@Cerberus To my puzzle question cited just above that.

HippoSawrUs

Here's a New Year's Resolution: No more referring to old, looks/seems-like-to-me kinda hedgy answers as original answers vs. leftover, just-getting-started fodder. Even if that person is the only one who really knows. It happens all the time.

Cerberus

01:46

@tchrist I got it.

jlliagre

@Mitch Yes. I anticipated that point by stating (well OK, we kind of can do it with gravity/speed but that won't help.)

tchrist

@Cerberus Caesar indeed moved the first day of the new year back two months from its traditional starting point. This all began when as pontifex maximus he fixed the crazy Romans' calendar "for good" by instituting his new Julian system following the painful annus confusionis he had to impose to get the seasons back where they belonged. It took up a lot of his brain for a while.

But I don't know why he moved when the year began.

CowperKettle

02:04

Be nice to dentists.
They have fillings too.

tchrist

@CowperKettle And fallings and fulling and felling and fouling and failings and filings. That joke works best when told in the accent of someone whose first language doesn't distinguish the FLEECE and KIT vowels. So like weeth a Spanish accent, for eenstance.

𐍅𐌹𐌻𐌸𐌴𐌹𐍃

Adjective: 𐍅𐌹𐌻𐌸𐌴𐌹𐍃 • (wilþeis)

wild

IPA /ˈwil.θiːs/.

That's

"\N{GOTHIC LETTER WINJA}\N{GOTHIC LETTER EIS}\N{GOTHIC LETTER LAGUS}\N{GOTHIC LETTER THIUTH}\N{GOTHIC LETTER AIHVUS}\N{GOTHIC LETTER EIS}\N{GOTHIC LETTER SAUIL}"

in perl or python.

Word of the Years to Come: Trumpomuskovia.

> “I think we overestimate Trump and we underestimate Musk,” he says. “People can’t help but think that Trump has money, but he doesn’t. He’s never really had money. He’s never even really claimed to have money. His whole notion is that you have to believe that he has money. But he’s never been able to pay his own debts. He’s never been able to finance his own campaigns.

> “Musk, with an amount of money that was meaningless to him, was able to finance Trump’s campaign, essentially. And all the threats that Trump is now going to issue – ‘I’m going to primary people, I’m going to sue people’ – Musk is going to pay for that, not Trump. And when Trump needs money for anything, he’s going to be asking Musk.

Supervillain much?

Seldom if ever have I overestimated Trump, I quite assure you.

> “So I thought about this dependency position. I was going to call
it Muskotrumpovia, because I think Musk is a more important person,
but Trumpomuskovia had a nicer ring to it. And I wanted ‘Muskovia’
because I wanted the idea of Russia to be there in the background,
because a lot of smart Russia hands are saying this all the time:
this is kind of like the 1990s in Russia. You have the the doddering,
rich-but-not-very-rich president [Boris Yeltsin then], surrounded
by more youthful, more active, ambitious oligarchs. That’s the kind

The Levenshtein distance distance between Muskovia and Moscovia is trivial.

It's supervillains all the way down.

Cerberus

02:36

@tchrist All I know is that it was al a confusing mess.

CowperKettle

02:51

How To Remove & Install a Cassette from a Shimano Freehub

►

He has a quaint pronunciation of freehub

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Linked punctuation in answer (78): Was the use of "who" instead of "whom" against the New York Times' house rules?‭ by Steve Mitchell‭ on english.SE

SmokeDetector

04:14

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at beginning of body (47): Why is onboarding remote employees crucial for business success?‭ by Haimeno Pav‭ on english.SE

CowperKettle

05:51

My bicycle is not moving normally, because the pawls in the freehub body have started getting stuck in the cold. I should disassemble the freehub and change the lube.

MetaEd

06:13

Wordle 1,293 3/6

⬛⬛🟩🟩🟩
⬛🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Strands #305
“Super bowl”
🟡🔵🔵🔵
🔵🔵🔵

Connections
Puzzle #571
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟦🟦🟦🟦

SmokeDetector

06:54

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Potentially bad keyword in answer (1): "Healthcare" or "Health care"?‭ by Larisa Albanians‭ on english.SE

CowperKettle

07:54

What did the inorganic alien say to the organic alien? ‘I’m sorry there is no chemistry between us.’

Vikas

08:19

I wonder if you guys have fog like this in winter.

Xanne

09:02

Yes, @Vikas, California’s central valley has what’s called tule fog.

Tule fog

Tule fog () is a thick ground fog that settles in the San Joaquin Valley and Sacramento Valley areas of California's Central Valley. Tule fog forms from late fall through early spring (California's winter season) after the first significant rainfall. The official time frame for tule fog to form is from November 1 to March 31. This phenomenon is named after the tule grass wetlands (tulares) of the Central Valley. As of 2005, tule fog was the leading cause of weather-related accidents in California. == Formation == Tule fog is a radiation fog, which condenses when there is a high relative humidity...

Vikas

@Xanne The one we have doesn't seem to depend on area or geography. Wherever temperature is low in winter, we get this fog.

CowperKettle

09:34

@Vikas Sometimes, when it's cold and there's no wind.

Vikas

09:56

@CowperKettle Wind could be a factor I guess.

Xanne

10:13

The Central Valley is very flat. It’s farmland and grazing.

handan_toddler

11:09

@tchrist the smoke detector is going off a lot in here

Language Overflow

This is the main chat room for ell.stackexchange.com. Welcome!

handan_toddler

11:21

30

Q: Reporting the recent infestation of new users resorting to gen AI targeting STEM communities

Of late, there has been a surge of new users who venture to various communities and answer at a pretty staggering rate with apparently good looking posts, majority of which would be long and heavy with mathjax formatted equations. The initial targets were: Cross Validated, Mathematics, Maths Over...

tchrist

11:37

@handan_toddler Yes, we have a variety of ills plaguing the network.

Staff, and many mods, have been on holiday for the past couple of weeks or so, and this allows for troubling patterns to fester and grow for longer before they're addressed.

Some are returning today, some next week.

handan_toddler

Thank you for your support 🙏 @tchrist

and, as always, quick reply

14 hours ago, by think_meaning_buildß

Quick as a wick you are.

GratefulDisciple

13:13

@tchrist I remember how when I was little, my dad proudly showed me his HP 12C calculator and explained to me how RPN works. Amazed it's still being sold today!

@tchrist My first assembly language program was self-taught when I was in high school, writing a program to calculate the nth prime numbers using a combination of Intel 8088 and 8087 math co-processor using Microsoft Micro Assembler (MASM) for MS-DOS. It was a lot of fun.

@tchrist PDP-11 is always mentioned in any history of Unix. It's cool you have experience with it. I never interacted with a minicomputer, let alone with its peripherals. The oldest peripheral I experienced was the 5 1/4" floppy disk when my dad started using an IBM PC clone. What storage did you use for PDP-11, its 8-inch floppy disk?

@Cerberus Thanks for asking the question.

@Cerberus The meat of the cultural clashes is reported in the linked two articles: this and this.

Connections
Puzzle #571
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟨🟨🟪🟨
🟨🟨🟪🟨
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟪🟪🟪🟪

CowperKettle

14:07

@tchrist The historical paths of the USA and of Russia are too different for the Moskovia scenario, thankfully. I'm full of hope. I'm optimistic about the USA, although I don't idealize it.

Even the USSR grew milder and more humane as years passed by.

Robusto

14:28

#travle #750 +0 (Perfect)
✅✅✅
https://travle.earth

tchrist

@GratefulDisciple No, the PDP-11/45s and 11/70s we had used hard disk platters like RK02s or RK05s or Fujitsu Eagles and DECtape, which was block addressable. I forget model numbers; TU11 comes to mine. The VAXen like the 750s and especially the 780s had had bigger streaming magtape drives. Only the little Teraks (a kind of LSI-11) had 8" floppies that students could access; the PDPs and Vaxen were not physically accessible to students. They were expected to use dot-matrix printers.

Robusto

15:01

#WhenTaken #310 (02.01.2025)

I scored 896/1000🏆

1️⃣📍17.4 km - 🗓️0 yrs - 🥇199/200
2️⃣📍475 km - 🗓️5 yrs - 🥇181/200
3️⃣📍753 km - 🗓️11 yrs - 🥈159/200
4️⃣📍257 m - 🗓️0 yrs - 🥇200/200
5️⃣📍86.3 km - 🗓️18 yrs - 🥈157/200

https://whentaken.com

Wordle 1,293 4/6

🟨⬛🟨🟨⬛
⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛
🟩⬛🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

GratefulDisciple

@tchrist That makes sense. So as a student you would store your files in your user folder which in turn is stored in the hard drive? At least you didn't need to submit jobs using punch cards?

Robusto

@GratefulDisciple When I worked for the German bank in the '70s we used punch cards and paper tape.

It seemed amazing. So fast!

tchrist

15:16

@GratefulDisciple Correct on both fronts. That said, I did know and work with people who used punch cards to submit their Fortran IV jobs.

GratefulDisciple

@Robusto Yup, because we're only dealing with essential texts, not like today's bloated everything.

tchrist

Eventually the Unix systems had f77 available to them.

But I don't know how well the Unix systems ever supported punch card decks.

You're talking more than 40 years ago.

In the 1981–1983 range.

Robusto

@GratefulDisciple And the only people who used the results were not the folks who put animated GIFs and the like in their posts (what were posts back then? Nothing!), etc.

But posting came in with Usenet and MUDDs and various other textual ventures, which seem so charmingly quaint these days.

GratefulDisciple

@Robusto When I was a student I saw how Usenet was implemented, used, and replicated. Very bandwidth and storage efficient compared to online forums today. And the posts are a lot more thoughtful too.

Robusto

@GratefulDisciple Yes, and trolls were dealt with summarily.

Connections
Puzzle #571
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟪

GratefulDisciple

15:27

usenetarchives.com/stats.php Average document size: 4.9 KB, total archive size 3.54 TB (776 million posts).

Robusto

Strands #305
“Super bowl”
🔵🟡🔵🔵
🔵🔵🔵

@GratefulDisciple I kind of wonder where they got that much storage. In those days, a gigabyte was a ponderous amount.

jlliagre

#WhenTaken #310 (02.01.2025)

I scored 934/1000👑

1️⃣📍39.4 km - 🗓️0 yrs - 🥇198/200
2️⃣📍18.1 m - 🗓️3 yrs - 🥇197/200
3️⃣📍4.6 km - 🗓️4 yrs - 🥇196/200
4️⃣📍1.2 km - 🗓️5 yrs - 🥇195/200
5️⃣📍411 km - 🗓️18 yrs - 🥈148/200

https://whentaken.com

Wordle 1,293 4/6

⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛
⬛⬛🟨⬛⬛
⬛⬛🟨⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Robusto

Daily Octordle #1074
7️⃣6️⃣
🔟8️⃣
🕛3️⃣
9️⃣🕐
Score: 68

Daily Sequence Octordle #1074
5️⃣6️⃣
7️⃣8️⃣
9️⃣🔟
🕚🕛
Score: 68

Haha, twins.

Mitch

15:43

> A basketball player is told by a doctor that he needs to slim down, so he switches to eating Crisco instead of butter, but he ends up losing HEIGHT, too.

It turns out that this is because Crisco is shortening.

Robusto

Tightrope, a daily trivia game | Britannica

Jan. 2, 2025

T I G H T R O P E
✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ 🎉

My Score: 2270

@Mitch Now you're playing to the cheap seats.

jlliagre

Connections
Puzzle #571
🟩🟨🟦🟪
🟨🟪🟩🟩
🟦🟦🟪🟩
🟨🟨🟦🟨

Robusto

jlliagre

Yes, color mix :-)

Robusto

And, curiously, the same colors.

I wonder if that's where they got the colors for Connections.

Oops, no, Froot Loops has red as well.

But the logo has the Connections colors.

Mitch

15:54

@Robusto Lucky Charms?

Starburst?

Robusto

@Mitch "... and pink hearts"

Mitch

M&Ms?

@Robusto I'm just making a case that maybe there needs to be an additional category.

Robusto

@Mitch They have red too.

Mitch

Or that all those cereals/candies/candied cereals went too far and they should have stopped at 4.

Robusto

Not even close.

Mitch

15:57

@Robusto Look man, I don't let evidence and logic get in the way of my opinions.

@Robusto Crayola?

jlliagre

Tightrope, a daily trivia game | Britannica

Jan. 2, 2025

T I G H T R O P E
✅ ✅ 💔 ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ 💔 ✅ 🎉

My Score: 1660

Mitch

Pantone?

Pantene?

Robusto

@Mitch What about the 64 box with a crayon sharpener in it?

@Mitch Pentatonix?

Mitch

1 min ago, by Mitch

@Robusto Look man, I don't let evidence and logic get in the way of my opinions.

@Robusto Well, there you go, they only use five notes.

jlliagre

raccoonfink.bandcamp.com/album/green-yellow-blue-purple

Robusto

16:01

@jlliagre Haha, nice!

Mitch

16:11

@jlliagre If you're ever feellng down, as though nobody cares or likes you, just remember that every day the guy who creates the crossword puzzle has just received a hundred emails of death threats.

jlliagre

@Mitch How come I was confident with my first guess and it just had one color of each! That guy deserves the hate mail! (Just kidding.)

Daily Octordle #1074
🔟🕛
6️⃣9️⃣
8️⃣4️⃣
7️⃣5️⃣
Score: 61

Daily Sequence Octordle #1074
4️⃣6️⃣
8️⃣9️⃣
🔟🕚
🕛🕐
Score: 73

alphabet

16:28

Odd fact of the day: TH-fronting once helped catch a murderer

> Storie recalled that [the killer] pronounced "things" as "fings" and "think" as "fink". [...] During one of the phone calls [to police], [the suspect] pronounced "think" as "fink". [...] Valerie Storie identified Hanratty in an identity parade, after each of the men in the parade had repeated the phrase used by the murderer: "Be quiet, will you? I'm thinking."

Apparently "identity parade" is British for "police lineup."

Mitch

@alphabet I see tall hats of fruit and rainbow-colored costumes.

alphabet

@Mitch I was going to say it sounds like something you'd hear Ben Shapiro ranting about.

Mitch

He's one of the good ones.

...said no one ever.

tchrist

Kermit the Frog Sing Along | Rainbow Connection | The Muppets

►

Cerberus

17:35

Connections
Puzzle #571
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟦🟪🟦
🟪🟦🟦🟦
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟪

Blue and purple were tough.

I thought of the correct link for purple with one word, but didn't know enough of the others, it seemed too flimsy.

As for blue, two words seemed well connected; the third I had no idea but guessed and Googled; the fourth I had absolutely no idea so I tried until it was accepted. Those two are again very American.

handan_toddler

U. S. A.

Make it great again.

GratefulDisciple

@Cerberus I was having more trouble with the yellow, and the purple (as usual) I got it as what's leftover. I think 2 words of the blue needs more familiarity with American culture.

Cerberus

> I think 2 words of the blue needs more familiarity with American culture.

Yes, exactly.

I didn't find yellow or green too hard.

GratefulDisciple

@Cerberus By my second guess, I realized that the yellow connection was. And 2 of the purple word meanings were new to me, even if I lived in America for a while already.

Cerberus

@GratefulDisciple Oh, you got blue first!

@GratefulDisciple Ah, that makes me feel less bad.

GratefulDisciple

17:47

@Cerberus Yes, just because those 2 words were part of my real experience in America. So yes, shouldn't feel bad at all.

@Robusto Don't forget Jelly Belly

They should publish each bean's Pantone® color ID too.

Robusto

18:22

Why It's So Hard To Understand Spoken French

►

Dannyu NDos

@GratefulDisciple I remember the first time I had them. Too sadge I forgot where they're sold.

GratefulDisciple

@DannyuNDos In the heyday of the mall era, an American mall used to have it where you can fill a bag with the assortment you want, and pay by weight.

Robusto

@GratefulDisciple So we're living in the Post-Mall period of the Holocene epoch?

I should write that down.

GratefulDisciple

@Robusto Yes, that's a good one, unless you want to credit Bezos / Amazon, the era where increasingly obese people shop from the comfort of their lazy couch.

Robusto

@GratefulDisciple I make it a point never to buy food or couches from Amazon.

GratefulDisciple

18:36

@Robusto Yes, I have so far resisted any take out food service such as Uber Eat.

Robusto

Well, except oatmeal. I buy the organic steelcut variety in bulk, 25l lbs (~11 kg) at a time from there.

@GratefulDisciple Should be called Uber Fat.

GratefulDisciple

@Robusto Yes, but you still need to do something before eating it, so that doesn't count. When I was very sick in college, I once ordered from a restaurant to be delivered by a 3rd party service. I think that was the only time I used such service. It was considered fancy at the time.

Robusto

Nothing satisfies for breakfast quite like steelcut oats with raisins, and chopped walnuts on top.

Jan 17, 2021 at 15:22, by Robusto

1. Ingredients in saucepan sans water 2. Ingredients with water, covered 3. Oatmeal just after cooking 4. Oatmeal in bowl. 5. Ready to eat with a pat of butter and a little honey

There are pictures right above that message.

I use a bit of maple syrup these days instead of honey.

Cerberus

19:35

@Robusto I did get chezpaskifeh.

GratefulDisciple

@Robusto Thanks, saw the pictures. Got to try. Will use maple syrup, after all, I am in Canada.

jlliagre

20:21

@Robusto So hard to understand French? No! /ʃe.pa.ski.lɛ̃.'vɑ̃t/ It's super easy!

Robusto

20:33

@GratefulDisciple What part? Toronto area?

@Cerberus I did not.

@jlliagre dafuqyamean?

jlliagre

20:48

@Robusto /ʃy.syr.kta.pi.ʒe/

Robusto

@jlliagre tsgreektahme.

jlliagre

@Robusto /ʃe.pa.ski.lɛ̃.'vɑ̃t/ : Je ne sais pas ce qu'il invente. /ʃy.syr.kta.pi.ʒe/ : Je suis sûr que tu as pigé. (= compris.)

Robusto

@jlliagre Who you callin' a pigé?

jlliagre

Nobody, that's a verb!

Robusto

I know. Just streeeeeetching the point.

jlliagre

20:56

The pigeon?

Robusto

@jlliagre The squab?

GratefulDisciple

@Robusto No, Alberta, but I try to just present myself as a Canadian.

@jlliagre Saw the video. I actually want to start learning French this year (decided it's more urgent than Latin), so I might drop in a question for you. Two topics this year: Machine learning math and French.

jlliagre

@Robusto learns a new five letter word for Wordle.

Robusto

@GratefulDisciple Calgary? Edmonton?

Must be getting cold up there already.

GratefulDisciple

@Robusto Calgary. Yes, it's below zero C already, better than Edmonton though, because of the Chinook.

Quite agree with the YouTuber that lots of listening practice (by turning off the subtitle) is important. It's like most classical musicians that don't get enough ear training by relying too much on the score. A well rounded musician needs to be able to identify the melody, chords, bass line, and the rhythm just by listening and be able to write a rudimentary score.

Robusto