English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Mitch

00:02

@Cerberus oh. You're in the future. I'm still on your yesterday.

Cerberus

@Mitch Yes.

Yesterday's was quite doable.

Though I wouldn't have thought of purple.

Robusto

00:32

@GratefulDisciple Well, yeah, but it just doesn't sound right. It's not usually in major chords, though (though those, if out of tune, put me through a special kind of hell), it's mostly in partial chords, leading tones out of whack, that sort of thing.

jlliagre

01:05

@Cerberus Tu remues le couteau dans la plaie !

Cerberus

@jlliagre Je suis désolé.

jlliagre

@Cerberus D'accord, mais que ça ne se reproduise plus ! ;-)

Cerberus

Je suis contrit—and that is probably not French.

jlliagre

01:39

@Cerberus Contrit is definitely French. A very good line in a formal/literary register. You can't be but absolved after that :-)

Cerberus

How divine.

I merely recycled the English word hehe.

jlliagre

> contrite (adj.)
"broken in spirit by a sense of guilt, conscience-stricken and resolved to not sin again," c. 1300, from Old French contrit (12c.) and directly from Latin contritus, literally "worn out, ground to pieces," in Late Latin "penitent," past participle of conterere "to grind," from assimilated form of com "with, together" (see con-) + terere "to rub" (from PIE root *tere- (1) "to rub, turn").

Used in Church Latin in a figurative sense of "crushed in spirit by a sense of sin." Related: Contritely.

Cerberus

This is the English word?

jlliagre

Right, etymonline.

Cerberus

OK.

I praesume most English word of French origin are still used, or recognised by educated speakers.

CowperKettle

01:52

To Morrow

►

Ivan Shukshin, an electoral analyst who showed statistically that in the 2024 Presidential election some 22 million non-cast ballots were added illegaly in favor of Putin, has just been put on the wanted list for drug trafficking. He has been living abroad since 2022 and never had any issues with drugs.

Russia will try to grab him through the Interpol by faking a drug trafficking case.

Cerberus

02:19

Does Interpol still accept Russian requests?

CowperKettle

@Cerberus Ah. Maybe not

Cerberus

02:37

@CowperKettle From what I gather, Interpol still accepts them, but false requests are supposedly mostly denied.

But the process of review seems to be opaque.

And there may be types of notice that are not reviewed before approval at all, so that they will need to be retracted later.

But I don't know whether any of this bad stuff has happened already.

tchrist

Ignore the bottom axis labels: just understand that it's the past 14 years of our site's existence.

From here.

GratefulDisciple

@Cerberus I can only say that "contrite" is still used widely in the Catholic church: catechism, liturgy, hymns, everywhere. But surprisingly not in Protestant churches, where they tend to use "repentant".

tchrist

@GratefulDisciple Oh that does sound right. Interesting. I think of contrition on the part of the defendant as something more that you would want to show to a jury or a judge, whereas you would never use repentant in a legal context.

Particularly for sentencing.

I am pretty sure I've heard contrite misused by casual speakers who aren't quite sure what it means.

Or sarcastically maybe, like it isn't real.

"Gee, aren't you the contrite one!"

"Don't pretend to be so contrite. It doesn't become you."

I guess we just try to express genuine regret, that we really are sorry about something we did.

Diplomatic language has formalized all these to specific and different levels.

Which I don't know. I just know saying you regret something and saying you are sorry about something isn't the same in diplomacy.

Something about not taking responsibility for things.

Apologies that aren't worth much.

Like Putin apologizing for "the fact that the tragic incident occurred in Russian airspace."

GratefulDisciple

03:00

@tchrist Yes, now that you mention it, quite interesting how the two words acquire such different connotations in the courtroom.

tchrist

No, "I'm sorry." No, "we did this and we were wrong to have done this and we take full responsibility" blah.

Xanne

I think “remorse” is what the guilty are supposed to show in the current US judicial system.

tchrist

Probably.

Putin just said he was sorry that it happened in Russian airspace. That doesn't count. He should have said he was sorry that Russia did this.

We can all be sorry it happened in Russian airspace. But we didn't do it. So it's different.

rferl.org/a/plane-crash-russia-influence-caucasus/33259438.html

Cerberus

@GratefulDisciple Protestants always needing to be different.

Xanne

@tchrist Do you think this can be reversed or stabilized, or is this model irrevocably failing, perhaps toward absorption into AI somewhere?

GratefulDisciple

03:05

@tchrist It seems Judaism is the most developed compared to Christianity when it comes to defining true repentance, via the Hebrew word teshuvah (תשובה), and Christian Protestant theology takes it as the central idea: turning 180 degrees. So "regret" and "apology" wouldn't cut it if you don't resolve not to do it again. And that resolve wouldn't be believable unless you have demonstrated how you understand the seriousness of the offense.

tchrist

@Xanne The second. I'm sorry.

Cerberus

@tchrist So what is wrong with this?

GratefulDisciple

I would think the sentencing judge would need to see it, and label the whole thing as "contrite".

tchrist

@Cerberus It's not wrong.

Cerberus

OK.

Xanne

03:07

@tchrist What is your estimated time to demise?

tchrist

@Xanne I came to that conclusion because I've been plugging in various SE questions to AI generators lately, for various reasons. And while it takes some care, you can get out better answers in most cases, faster, at least for the simplistic beginners' stuff.

GratefulDisciple

@Cerberus In that sentence probably "contrite" refers to merely facial / behavioral expression but not coming out from a truly repentant heart, thus superficial.

tchrist

@Xanne I don't know. And I don't know what demise means in this circumstance. I just don't see any possible way for the tide to turn.

We get so few good questions.

0

Q: What is the difference between "means/ mode/ form/ type of transport"?

What is the difference between "means/ mode/ form/ type of transport"? It would also help if you can cite the source. Thanks

That's not a very good question.

But it's a very simple question, and an AI will do better, faster, for this user's purposes.

Than we will.

Xanne

@tchrist The owners of the enterprise, which has been bought by private equity as I understand it, must be looking at that too.

tchrist

I expect five to ten comments overnight while I sleep. But no answers. It will surely be closed before then.

@Xanne We've seen waves of layoffs.

They're trying everything they can. I don't see anything that is going to turn it around.

Meanwhile Sven keeps posting answers no AI ever could.

He's so underappreciated.

It takes a lot of work to post a scholarly, defensible, professional answer.

Because no matter what they do, people are not asking, and people are not answering.

We're worked very hard to chase off the "easy" stuff to ELL. But nobody wants to do the tough stuff.

The Q&A model seems to be permanently disrupted by AI.

Xanne

03:15

@tchrist I agree on Sven. His answers would make an interesting book. However I think SO will sell the data to an AI source and delete it, except for the sites that generate ad revenue.

tchrist

We have the dumps.

Xanne

We?

tchrist

The public does.

All the data is public under licence.

Cerberus

I wouldn't say this is great.

Some of it is not quite right.

Xanne

Public, sure, but hosted? Available?

Cerberus

03:17

It shouldn't be extremely expensive to host.

If the new site just doesn't do much development or have any overhead.

tchrist

@Xanne Right, no.

@Cerberus No, but you can get longer answers out of these if you try, like this. And that's getting better. And it took zero time and zero effort.

Xanne

Is hitch-hiking a means or a mode?

I think a means.

Cerberus

@tchrist OK that is better.

It acknowledges that the differences are not very tight.

I wouldn't say "individual vehicles", though, in the summary.

tchrist

One of the problems with AI answers is they almost always try to sound more authoritative than they should.

Cerberus

Yes.

And that you can never know whether they are right unless you already know the answers.

tchrist

03:23

Correct.

Cerberus

Or have a means to check them.

Or even a mode.

Xanne

Anyway, the asker is, I think, genuinely puzzled, trying to learn English, and in fact shouldn’t be worrying about it, as in any practical application any one of them will work.

tchrist

Hitchhiking doesn't say whether you're picked up by a car or a truck, or, really, by anybody in particular.

People used to hitchhike a great deal more than they do now.

> In 2011, Freakonomics Radio reviewed sparse data about hitchhiking, and identified a steady decline in hitchhiking in the US since the 1970s, which it attributed to a number of factors, including a greater lack of trust of strangers, lower air travel costs due to deregulation, the presence of more money in the economy to pay for travel and more numerous and more reliable cars.

Cerberus

That makes sense.

It is probably the same here.

Xanne

Or a method.

Cerberus

03:27

I wonder about this greater lack of trust of strangers. Is it real? And is it justified?

@Xanne Yes.

tchrist

Soldiers and sailors on leave always wore their uniforms when hitchhiking because you had a much better chance of being picked up.

@Xanne I think the fact that the four versions have very different frequencies is because they aren't used in quite the same way. They are not complete synonyms.

Xanne

I hitchedhiked through Europe, with a young man if I could find one—safer for me, easier to get a ride for him. Even into Berlin after thr wall went up.

Autostop, it was called.

tchrist

Yes, it was indeed. I rode the trains through Europe as a youth, sometimes alone but often not. But not like hobos; I paid.

I think today if I had to do it all over again, I would not want to hitchhike alone as a small, young person.

A twenty year old weighing 135 pounds or whatever I was would get picked up easily enough, because they're small enough they don't seem harmful.

Oh wait, I did hitchhike out of France once back to Andorra.

Had no choice.

Xanne

Me neither. I had a couple of close calls and am grateful to have escaped unscathed.

Cerberus

03:51

@Xanne Went up, or went down?

@Xanne Story time!

Xanne

@tchrist No, they’re not complete synonyms. But their idiomatic use is not going to be learned from explanations, however sophisticated they may be.

tchrist

How can the asker be helped?

Xanne

@tchrist Probably the asker needs examples. Most people don’t actually talk about modes and forms of transportation. Someone’s going to Rome. How is he going to get there?

Modes are useful if you want to discuss commerce, where there’s surface, sea, air. Sea is reliably the cheapest.

rail, truck, CONTEXT.

Jimmy Carter began transportation deregulation, which involved rail versus trucking. Also air. Ronald Reagan continued this move. But this person is in East Asia somewhere puzzling over vocabulary that is used only in formal articles.

@Cerberus Not long after it went up, and long before it came down. I crossed into East Berlin at Checkpoint Charlie.

I travelled through Yugoslavia when Tito was in power.

Before it was Croatia and Slovakia and all the rest.

Cerberus

04:14

@Xanne Some time ago!

Xanne

@Cerberus Yes, indeed.

Before the EU, before the Euro.

Cerberus

The Euro came when I was an adult, in 2002.

Just barely.

Xanne

So you never really knew a Europe behind the Iron Curtain.

It would be like going to North Korea today, or Iran.

Even after the wall came down, Eastern Europe and Russia were spooky.

Cerberus

04:32

My father always told me stories about how people would devise way to get to West Berlin.

Bridges, balloons made of sheets, tunnels.

Then, when I was 6, I was called to the television, when it was falling.

Xanne

So you remember how important it was to him?

Cerberus

To everyone.

It was a big thing.

Not to mention long.

Xanne

It was stunning to me.

Cerberus

I think few people expected it to fall then.

There, yes. Then, no.

Xanne

Ikve never heard about bridges or balloons.

Cerberus

04:44

chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180604/freudenberg-winfried

Xanne

And now Russia wants to take back some of what the USSR controlled, it seems to me.

Cerberus

Sure.

The more, the better.

Xanne

05:01

Thank you for the balloon story. I had not heard about it before.

tchrist

05:15

@Cerberus Whereas for us, that was when we watched Neil Armstrong step onto the lunar surface.

It's the sort of event that your parents make sure you see.

Cerberus

Tunnel 57

Tunnel 57 was a tunnel under the Berlin Wall that on 3 and 4 October 1964 was the location of a mass escape by 57 East Berlin citizens to West Berlin. It was built from the basement of an empty bakery at 97 Bernauer Straße in West Berlin, under the Berlin Wall – which at that time and place consisted of empty, bricked-up apartment buildings on the east side of Bernauer Straße – all the way to a disused outhouse in the rear courtyard at 55 Strelitzer Straße in East Berlin. At a depth of 12 meters (39 ft) and a length of 145 meters (476 ft), Tunnel 57 was the longest, deepest and most expensive flight...

Liste der Fluchttunnel in Berlin während der deutschen Teilung

Die unten stehende, von Marion Detjen zusammengestellte Liste der Fluchttunnel in Berlin während der deutschen Teilung enthält 39 Tunnelprojekte. Eine weitere bekannte Liste mit 70 Tunnelprojekten stammt von Dietmar Arnold und Sven Felix Kellerhoff. Mindestens 254 Personen konnten laut Detjen auf diesem Weg aus der DDR fliehen. Während der Tunnelfluchten kam es zu mindestens vier Todesfällen und über 200 Verhaftungen. Etwa die Hälfte der Projekte konnte keine erfolgreichen Fluchten ermöglichen. == Statistik == Die Tunnel wurden von beiden Richtungen unter der Grenze hindurch gegraben. Dabei gab…

tchrist

05:33

Ceaușescu was as well loved as Gaddafi in the end. I remember cheers that went up. Somewhere.

HippoSawrUs

@tchrist I still remember us all standing in front of the TV, couldn't sit down, and my dad telling me there was a man on the moon.

tchrist

Yeah.

HippoSawrUs

Okay, whose idea was true crime animation? That's really creepy…

tchrist

I'd been watching Star Trek for years by then. It was on past my bedtime but they made an exception for the series because my dad was such a fan.

> In the United Kingdom the series was not broadcast until July 12, 1969, coinciding with the Apollo 11 mission to land the first humans on the Moon.

But it finished just before that for us.

I was honestly surprised that Suharto didn't get the Ceaușescu treatment. Tito somehow escaped that particular fate, but his end was still grisly.

HippoSawrUs

I'm not as old as I seem to be… I told my dad it wasn't true and went outside to see for myself. He laughed; he was the best.

tchrist

05:47

I was six.

HippoSawrUs

I don't really remember anything before Jack LaLanne, Lawrence Welk, and Sesame Street.

I was 3. But my parents were deaf. Pictures, signs, are easier to remember than words.

tchrist

Even so, that was still five years before Nixon was forced out, which seemed like it took forever. Like a year of boring Watergate hearings first.

All these things were only in black and white in my mind. No such thing as color TV in my life.

HippoSawrUs

My first memory is having the measles or mumps. They put me in a portable crib and laid a thin blanket over the top of it. What the heck… Weird '60s stuff.

tchrist

Chicken pox.

I remember around the same time my young teenage uncle got the measles, though, and badly. Couldn't go over there.

handan_toddler

> Home ownership: By 1970, about half of the homes in the United States had color TVs.

Not in the upper half, hey :-)

HippoSawrUs

06:04

Hey, we still had a B&W console TV when Fonzie wore a pink shirt to high school. (Was he a teacher or student?) Because all our color sets were stolen. The '70s…being robbed constantly. We hid our "valuables" before we went to school, but they stole our frozen veggies anyway… Hard times for people; no one remembers.

handan_toddler

Wow, tough neighborhood.

HippoSawrUs

@tchrist Chicken pox at age 6. I wore my Calamine pink dress so it wouldn't show stains.

@handan_toddler Nope, we didn't have any neighbors except our grandparents on a farm.

Which is scarier sometimes.

Deaf people were big targets before technology.

Even though they can sense air and light changes and bash your skull in before you know your shampoo gave you away

@tchrist I remember drawing a picture of Nixon, from the World Book Encyclopedia, for the bullentin board.

I was considered talented until copy machines replaced me.

I never could draw anything I couldn't see. In the Encycolpedia or somewhere.

Except fruit; I'm pretty much a cornucopia master.

handan_toddler

06:30

@HippoSawrUs why would they bash your skull in?

HippoSawrUs

@handan_toddler I meant if you were a robber.

Not me or you personally

Haha

handan_toddler

oh

HippoSawrUs

We all slept with a bat

I still have mine

solid dark wood toddler bat

Dad would answer the door with it behind his back

He was athletic

We didn't think we were afraid

Then you grow up and check the locks repeatedly

handan_toddler

Didn't the cops do anything?

HippoSawrUs

One time they dusted for prints

Because they were sure it was a gang of escaped convicts from Florida

Any other time, you would have to identify the criminals for them

They actually said, 'How can we take a warrant out on them if we don't know who they are?'

handan_toddler

06:40

Pfff

HippoSawrUs

I mean, what if it was a serial killer?

handan_toddler

it sounds more like the poor stealing from the poor, imo

HippoSawrUs

Our deaf friend was attacked by the drunk guy that sits in front of the store all the time

A woman in a van driving by stopped and saved him

I called the sheriff's office and they said they couldn't do anything because we didn't know his name and address

handan_toddler

Come and find out, sheriff

HippoSawrUs

I know, right

So he was not relected

His sons were involved in drugs

IDK what all

And he was replaced with a good sheriff

not re-elected, I meant

I do think times change for the better, just not steadily better

My best friend's brother stole my 10-speed

Like the world's dumbest petty thief

Haha

handan_toddler

06:50

They say 90% of the time it is somebody you know

HippoSawrUs

I think so, but it's harder now

A long time ago, people's numbers were on their house phones. So if a thief saw your number, they would remember it and call it to see if anyone was home before trying to break in at night

My dad didn't understand because we were unlisted

Didn't realize we knew the people or they had been in our house before

But we got a TTY and they were afraid of them

We pretended like we were tracing their call

Like the FBI, haha

Good times

Now we have to worry about being hacked from the Virgin Islands

Or whatever

handan_toddler

LoL

CowperKettle

07:08

Why Therapy Sucks For Men

►

At 05:30 he switches into what sounds like Hindi, although I'm not sure

Vikas

07:25

@CowperKettle Sounds like some Indian language.

Not Hindi though.

Could be Gujarati.

CowperKettle

08:06

@HippoSawrUs I wonder what "TTY" means

HippoSawrUs

09:03

@CowperKettle 'A TTY is a device that allows deaf people to type messages over the phone lines. A TDD is a smaller version of a TTY.' Gallaudet.edu

The first TTYs were huge, had a seat attached, no kidding, and produced a large printout (like a typewriter), so everyone could read it later.

Our friends had one. It was $700.

We did not. My parents had to wait for the small ones with a digital readout.

HippoSawrUs

09:21

Can I just tell the OP that Walmart rules our everyday retail lives here, so the term sales associate is the general term now, for decades, b/c Walmart makes everybody do everything, except the very brawny 2nd shift stockers who are not wasted on tasks unrelated to lifting the entire Earth's bottled water supply and all the beer too?

We're all experts… I blame the 88-cent things. What happened?

CowperKettle

10:39

Telecommunications device for the deaf

A telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD) is a teleprinter, an electronic device for text communication over a telephone line, that is designed for use by persons with hearing or speech difficulties. Other names for the device include teletypewriter (TTY), textphone (common in Europe), and minicom (United Kingdom). The typical TDD is a device about the size of a typewriter or laptop computer with a QWERTY keyboard and small screen that uses an LED, LCD, or VFD screen to display typed text electronically. In addition, TDDs commonly have a small spool of paper on which text is also printed...

An 88 cent banknote

Mitch

13:20

@CowperKettle "I don't get it"

@CowperKettle maybe you don't have change for a one, so you accept the discount?

Robusto

14:19

#travle #751 +0 (Perfect)
✅✅✅✅
https://travle.earth

@Mitch Or maybe 88 is a magic number?

jlliagre

Robusto

Like Oldsmobile used to have a "Rocket 88" V8 engine?

jlliagre

@Robusto It is for Chinese people.

Robusto

Why? Lucky numbers?

jlliagre

Yes.

Robusto

14:21

Sad.

jlliagre

Chinese numerology

Some numbers are believed by some to be auspicious or lucky (吉利, pinyin: jílì; Cantonese Yale: gātleih) or inauspicious or unlucky (不吉, pinyin: bùjí; Cantonese Yale: bātgāt) based on the Chinese word that the number sounds similar to. The numbers 6 and 8 are widely considered to be lucky, while 4 is considered unlucky. These traditions are not unique to Chinese culture, with other countries with a history of Han characters also having similar beliefs stemming from these concepts. == Zero == The number 0 (零, pinyin: líng) is the beginning of all things and is generally considered a good number,...

Seven, on the other hand, is the number of Rugby players in a Rugby sevens team.

Robusto

@jlliagre And is a "lucky" number with special resonance everywhere. The Seven Samurai, The Magnificent Seven, The Seven Sisters, Seven Against Thebes, Seven-Up, etc., etc., ad infinitum.

jlliagre

@Robusto Oh yes. I was referring to the Fijian seven dollars banknote.

Robusto

@jlliagre I know. I was adding background.

jlliagre

14:37

Chat surprise: In Cantonese, 7 (Cantonese Yale: chāt) sounds like 𨳍 (Cantonese Yale: chat), which is a vulgar way of saying "penis".

Robusto

#WhenTaken #311 (03.01.2025)

I scored 900/1000👑

1️⃣📍2.0 km - 🗓️1 yrs - 🥇199/200
2️⃣📍534 km - 🗓️3 yrs - 🥇181/200
3️⃣📍2.5K km - 🗓️2 yrs - 🥈143/200
4️⃣📍22.6 km - 🗓️4 yrs - 🥇195/200
5️⃣📍34.4 m - 🗓️11 yrs - 🥇182/200

https://whentaken.com

@jlliagre No chat in chat, please.

Wordle 1,294 4/6

⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛
🟨🟨⬛⬛⬛
⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Connections
Puzzle #572
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟨🟨🟨🟨

Ha, I deliberately did the yellow one last.

Pretty easy today, but a bit tough in one area for those unfamiliar with US slang.

Strands #306
“On auto”
🔵🔵🔵🔵
🔵🔵🟡🔵

CowperKettle

15:03

I did nothing the whole day because I cannot focus and plan my actions. But I took a 40-minute walk in the park.

The rest of the time, I tried to read some neuroscience news.

But my mind is not working properly, so no luck with that. I get tired reading them.

I have 6120 rubles left, the bicycle is broken, the spare parts will arrive on January 5, and I will try to fix it and earn some more money.

tchrist

Constituent tree:

(S (PP The next time
       (S (NP he)
          (VP was
              (ADJP (ADVP far more)
                    careful))))
   ,
   (S (NP (NP the bike)
          (VP wobbling
              (ADVP a bit)
              (PP as
                  (NP it))))
      (VP rose
          (PP into
              (NP the air))
          (PP with
              (NP him))
          (PP aboard)))
   .)

From pasting The next time he was far more careful, the bike wobbling a bit as it rose into the air with him aboard. into this parser.

0

Q: Why is the strange sentence structure in "He was far more careful, the bike wobbling a bit..."?

The sentence from a book: The next time he was far more careful, the bike wobbling a bit as it rose into the air with him aboard. I am interested in a sentence clause starting from “the bike wobbling”. It is not a tense pattern. It doesn’t look like participle clause, because they have differen...

grammar syntactic-analysis present-participles grammatical-roles nonfinite-clause-complementation

People are forever asking about these.

Some are even asking who speak other Indo-European languages as their first language.

That parse isn't actually "right".

This AI rewriter suggests it's the same as The next time, he was much more cautious, and the bike swayed slightly as it lifted off the ground with him on it.

Robusto

Daily Octordle #1075
7️⃣🕚
6️⃣8️⃣
9️⃣🔟
🕐4️⃣
Score: 68

Weak.

Daily Sequence Octordle #1075
5️⃣9️⃣
🔟🕚
🕛🕐
⓮⓯
Score: 89

Got caught in quicksand on that one.

Spoiler

Tightrope, a daily trivia game | Britannica

Jan. 3, 2025

T I G H T R O P E
💔 ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ 🎉

My Score: 1900

M.A.R.

15:27

@tchrist why is the strange sentence structure what?

@tchrist I prefer AI got basic arithmetic right first

tchrist

15:44

@M.A.R. "Absolutely".

Et ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis.

Such absolutions always confusticate and bebother the pineapple express parsers.

@M.A.R. I know that alla kidz is adoin that thing you just did there, but this time you've gardenpathed me down a heisenparse: is that really "I prefer THAT (AI got basic arithmetic right first)" or is really "I prefer (AI THAT got basic arithmetic right first)"? Wholly inquisitive minds want to know!

Loki, always the hokey-pokey trickster!

Robusto

16:03

@tchrist You callin' me a sinner?

M.A.R.

@tchrist whoa who knew the hidden genius behind my messages? But the second one sounds wrong to me. I wouldn't omit "that" there

@tchrist low-sai sounds really out of this world to me

Never gonna look at that word the same way again

Loci foci Fauci

tchrist

16:17

@M.A.R. Not to mention Hello, Silas! > ’Lo ’Si!, which is kind of lossy but not so law sea.

Hocus pocus never jokus

Mind the frog will never crocus.

cocus wood

Noun: cocus wood (uncountable)

The tree Brya ebenus
The wood from the tree, used for making flutes and other musical instruments

Hoc est corpus meum.

Robusto

Ego te absolvo... I wonder if they could just say Te absolvo, dropping the subject the way Spanish would.

tchrist

@Robusto Of course.

Robusto

Or maybe that is just a Spanish peccadillo?

tchrist

@Robusto Using the subject pronoun is something of a marked use in many instances, so indicating contrast or emphasis.

Can ghee be fun?

Robusto

I guess you can drop subject pronouns in English too, in certain cases: "See? Took two helpings and three drinks." The subject would have to be plain, however.

Unfortunate picture placement.

Although maybe you do get a flying car when you die. Dunno.

Mitch

16:32

@M.A.R. AI has arithmetic right just fine (that's what calculators do, or if you will, computer algebra systems). What you're annoyed at (if I may presume...well I'll just go ahead and do so), is that LLMs don't do arithmetic well. It's not obvious at all (because they 'speak' so well) but it's hard to learn the 'addition' algorithm (which works for all numbers) from examples.

You knew I was going to say that.

Also, I know that you know that already, I'm just talking to say things

@Robusto That's a musical instrument I never heard of.

Robusto

Correction: Maybe you do get a flying car when you die but you have to steal it. That's much more likely.

Mitch

@M.A.R. Oh I didn't actually address the complaint... most of the commercial LLMs (chatgpt, claude, gemini) are getting much better at doing math (ie it takes longer and longer number of digits before you get an error), and the reason is probably because the developers are either 1) adding lots of longer examples to the training set, or

2) whenever the LLM recognizes that arithmetic is involved, it tries to pass off the actual calculation to a computer algebra system eg ChatGPT has some deal with Wolfram (the Mathematica computer algebra system) I don't know what the actual technical connection is, by internal of external API, or whatever.

@Robusto Whether you steal it or not, I'm pretty sure if you get a flying car you're gonna die.

Robusto

@Mitch Only if everyone has one.

Mitch

@tchrist Loki was low-key loco.

@Robusto It's hard to brake in those things... there's no slowing down due to friction.

I'm seeing more and more videos of 'iron-man' style flying jet-packs.

Robusto

16:47

@Mitch There's some slowing down due to friction. Air resistance, precipitation, mountains ...

Mitch

The guys who use them must have super strong arms and shoulders to hold up.

@Robusto telephone poles, trees that jump out of nowhere.

Robusto

@Mitch Not to mention crotch straps.

Mitch

@Robusto winces

Robusto

inorite

Mitch

Why don't the put the persons body -below- the thrusters on these ironman things? Much more stable that way.

Oh...because of the exhaust in your face.

Robusto

16:50

That would be a problem, yes.

Mitch

well the amazon drone delivery system doesn't have that problem. the box of paperclips delivered to your door doesn't care about the exhaust.

How about a ballistic human propulsion system? Shoot up people into the sky in a parabolic arc, directly to where you need to land.

The take off and the landing are the hardest part.

In between, you're in funtime weightlessness.

Robusto

Imagine how the energy consumption would soar if everybody flew everywhere.

jlliagre

17:21

#WhenTaken #311 (03.01.2025)

I scored 884/1000🏆

1️⃣📍104 km - 🗓️1 yrs - 🥇194/200
2️⃣📍865 m - 🗓️3 yrs - 🥇197/200
3️⃣📍2.2K km - 🗓️4 yrs - 🥈144/200
4️⃣📍185 km - 🗓️18 yrs - 🥈154/200
5️⃣📍10.7 km - 🗓️4 yrs - 🥇195/200

https://whentaken.com

MetaEd

Wordle 1,294 4/6

🟨⬛⬛⬛🟨
⬛🟨⬛🟨⬛
🟨🟨🟨🟩⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Strands #306
“On auto”
🟡🔵🔵🔵
🔵🔵🔵🔵

Connections
Puzzle #572
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩

jlliagre

17:44

Connections
Puzzle #572
🟩🟦🟩🟩
🟩🟪🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟪🟦🟨🟦
🟦🟦🟦🟨

@Robusto As you say.

Wordle 1,294 3/6

🟨⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛⬛🟩🟩⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Daily Octordle #1075
4️⃣9️⃣
3️⃣7️⃣
🔟8️⃣
🕚6️⃣
Score: 58

Daily Sequence Octordle #1075
4️⃣5️⃣
7️⃣8️⃣
9️⃣🔟
🕚🕛
Score: 66

GratefulDisciple

@jlliagre I almost blew it myself; the purple one I wouldn't have guessed (though I recognize the words afterwards), and the green one is very American.

Connections
Puzzle #572
🟨🟦🟦🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟪🟦🟨🟨
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟨🟪🟨
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟪🟪🟪🟪

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