English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Robusto

00:11

@tchrist Spacely Sprockets?

tchrist

00:22

@Robusto Yes, George.

Robusto

Wait, I think I'm Elroy.

tchrist

> SHE NOOKS

the living wind
lifting leaves
aloft leaves
no leaf alive
no life left

It was 63: with the wind behind you you fly, before you you falter.

We've got 85 mph hot winds here.

Robusto

We have light winds and right now at my house it's 60°.

tchrist

The snoweater is here.

All my words tonight are mine. Caesar shall have nothing from me.

Mitch

01:38

@Robusto goddammit

CowperKettle

@Robusto +15°C?

Robusto

@CowperKettle Yup.

tchrist

01:57

Sometimes the blasts shake the house so hard tonight you feel like anything could happen. Like a pickup truck hitting the roof. Like a trip to Oz.

In ancient times the pandemics spreading to the thinking machines seem to infect so very few in comparison to today's as to have been barely worth noticing or announcing.

CowperKettle

@Robusto Is it good or bad? The temperature inside the house is only 15C? Then it's not good, more heating is needed

tchrist

In ancient times the pandemics spreading to the thinking machines seemed to infect so very few in comparison to today's as to have been barely worth noticing or announcing.

> NOVUM VIRUS COMPUTATORIUM

Novum viri computatorii genus nomine Code Red in
praesenti in Interreti grassatur, ut nuntiavit
institutum SANS, cuius est securitati retis informatici
providere. Code Red II, quod per cursum electronicum
diffunditur, priore viro acerbius est et, postquam in
servitoria penetravit, in systema lacunam facit. Ita
fieri potest, ut alia vira eaque etiam periculosiora in
machinas computatorias irrepant. Iam vermis Code Red I
molestissimus fuit, cum biduo in trecenta milia

> Nuntii Latini: Finnish Broadcasting Company (Radiophonia Finnica Generalis). Archiv I. 19.5.2000 - 6.12.2002

I bet those "trecenta milia" wouldn't sound like all that many if it happened today.

Robusto

@CowperKettle That's the outside temperature, or was. Now it's 52 °F or a little over 10 °C outside the house.

tchrist

I still have 59 outside. That and a freight train.

This is February?

Robusto

@tchrist This is New February.

tchrist

02:07

When the Indians' demon snow-eater winds fall about and upon us, it seems like madness.

Robusto

Going to be >70° this week (>20 °C).

tchrist

> Mid and upper level winds over Colorado are much stronger in the winter than in the warm season, because of the huge difference in temperature from north to south across North America. West winds, under certain conditions, can bring warm, dry Chinook winds plowing down the slopes of the eastern mountains.

> > These winds can exceed 100 mph in extreme cases, bringing the potential for widespread damage. Winds of 60 to near 100 mph will occur in and near the foothills in areas such as Fort Collins, Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs, Canon City, Westcliffe, Walsenburg, and Trinidad.

> The areas around Boulder and Westcliffe are especially prone to the extreme wind episodes.

Yes, I've seen it hit 124 mph twice while I've lived here.

But at least no hurricane rain or fire tornado came with that. That time.

Cerberus

Meteorological trouble?

tchrist

Well, those times. They were not on the same day nor even successive days.

Robusto

@tchrist I've got caught out on my bike when the winds hit 40-50 mph.

tchrist

02:11

@Cerberus High winds.

Robusto

Was not fun.

Cerberus

Hmm.

tchrist

Like I said, with the winds behind you you fly but with the winds before you you falter.

So it was for me today.

Cerberus

Yeah, that's not good.

tchrist

I stayed several hundred yards from the nearest trees. I didn't feel in danger. It was just a bit daunting.

Cerberus

02:13

You went out for your usual stroll?

tchrist

Yes.

Of course.

I do not let weather stop me. Ever.

5 miles.

Cerberus

Any praecipitation?

tchrist

No.

Cerberus

Good.

tchrist

Only spittle from off the melting mountainsides, which doesn't count.

CowperKettle

02:14

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds"

tchrist

Exactly that.

I wear appropriate lighting by gloom of night.

max 1300 lumen headlamp, max 13,000 lumen handlamp.

Cerberus

That sounds like a lot.

tchrist

It's really exceptionally bright, if I need it.

The handlamp will overheat in 45s at that power level, then drop back. I normally run it a lot lower than that.

Cerberus

What would you need such luminescence for?

tchrist

Monsters!

Cerberus

02:17

I see.

tchrist

I sometimes feel the need to pierce the darkness far from me, looking for bears.

Cerberus

Frightening.

Bears won't come running towards you?

tchrist

@Cerberus They already know where I am. It's not fair if I don't know where they are.

Cerberus

Does that help?

tchrist

I haven't quite had to put it to the test yet. In warmer seasons I have come upon steaming piles of their scat lying in the middle of the trail while in utter darkness, and felt that I dearly wanted to go in whichever direction they had not gone.

Being able to pierce the darkness comforted me in that hour.

So far I've only chanced upon them at day's end fading quickly to twilight, never at night.

Well, in the past year or so.

They SHOULD be sleeping right now. But 63F is absolutely warm enough for them to clamber about looking for a snack.

When their poop is still steaming in the freezing air, you know they are close to you.

Also, I just never ever want to surprise a bear. That's a recipe for disaster.

I want them to know where I am from a good ways off.

So we can avoid each other.

Mitch

02:24

@Robusto holy crap! It's already February?

tchrist

These aren't hungry grizzlies, just black bears (species not color). Either will of course kill you trivially if it feels like it, but the brown bears (species not color) seem far more apt to make a go for you.

@Mitch Not February as we have known it, no it is not.

It's something else.

Cerberus

Oh, black bears don't normally attack humans?

tchrist

Not so often, that's right.

I don't know that I want to say "normally".

It's not common at all.

But it does still happen.

Cerberus

Hmm.

I would be too afraid to go there.

tchrist

List of fatal bear attacks in North America

This is a list of human deaths caused by bear attacks in North America by decade in reverse chronological order. These fatalities have been documented through news media, reports, cause-of-death statistics, scientific papers, or other sources. For general information on the topic, see bear attack. Fatal bear attacks in North America have occurred in a variety of settings. There have been several in wilderness habitats of bears involving hikers, hunters, and campers. Brown bear (including the subspecies grizzly bear) incidents have occurred in its native range spanning Alaska, Northern Canada, and...

Mitch

02:29

Then there the fact that it's been ten years since last week.

tchrist

Nobody has been eaten by a bear in Colorado since 2021.

Mitch

@Cerberus if you just talk to them rationally, they'll understand.

Cerberus

That's dogs, not bears.

Mitch

Nah, it's bears too.

Don't make any fast moves though.

No one likes that, to be sure, in a tense situation.

tchrist

Not since 2021-04-30 to be exact when a female aged 39, Laney Malavolta of Durango, was eaten by a mother and her cubs.

> Malavolta was attacked and killed while hiking with her dogs in the forest above and to the west of US 550, near Trimble. Her body showed signs of partial consumption. Authorities euthanized a mother black bear and two cubs found nearby. After an autopsy, it was determined that the mother bear and one of her cubs had fed upon Malavolta.

Mitch

02:32

I mean say you're shitting in the woods and some stupid bear 'intrudes'. I'd be pretty angry.

tchrist

@Mitch Kids go through drills at schools for this kind of thing.

Mitch

Put yourself in the bears position.

Like squatting.

I wonder if that's how they do it.

tchrist

Every ten-year old should absolutely know what to do and what not to do when they encounter a bear or a mountain lion or an elk or a moose or a rattlesnake or other venomous serpent. It's just basic living skills, so of course it's taught.

Mitch

Of course

Animal etiquette

tchrist

The elk won't be much trouble if you don't bother it too much. The others are mostly that same way, but are far more likely to not be than the elk are.

Mitch

02:37

What is it that they say? 'They're more scared of you than them'? Except they can kill you easily with their bare claws.

Also bear claws.

tchrist

Down by the Four Corners region you should also learn about scorpion etiquette. And in any event you should remember that beyond Colorado there do exist venomous snakes that are not rattlers, as well as non-venomous snakes in Colorado that pretend to be rattlers. We only have three kinds of rattlesnakes.

@Mitch This is true. I have it on direct experience, at least with bears. I don't get the idea that I've ever frightened a moose even a little, though.

Mitch

Well that sounds like intentionally misleading if not lying.

tchrist

The lion just growled at me. I doubt it was all that afraid.

Mitch

@tchrist they never looked scared

Cerberus

I would be so scared, living in a place with dangerous animals outside.

Robusto

02:39

@Mitch All month.

Mitch

At least in the YouTube videos of them with garbage cans stuck on their heads

tchrist

The second time in the same day I ran into the same poor young black bear, it ran like hell when it saw me. It must have thought I was tracking it.

@Cerberus Naw, you get used to it. Plus you can always go hide in some city.

Mitch

@Robusto that'll take forever to get to March.

tchrist

You'll never have any of those in say the Capital Hill area at the heart of Denver.

Robusto

@Cerberus The most dangerous animals are the human ones.

@tchrist It's almost March already. February is a short month.

tchrist

02:41

@Robusto This is why I don't hang out in cities. I'm terrified of all the humans there.

Cerberus

@Robusto I don't know, those don't do anything.

Mitch

@tchrist never make eye contact

tchrist

They're really much harder to predict or defend yourself from than animals around me here are.

Cerberus

But, yeah, maybe in a really bad neighbourhood.

But generally the city is just very safe.

And the countryside all the more so.

tchrist

Hah.

Robusto

02:42

@Cerberus Or in a good neighborhood that has sociopaths.

Cerberus

I suppose, maybe.

Mitch

Or in the best neighborhoods with robot attack dogs roaming the streets.

Cerberus

But there are always people around.

tchrist

@Cerberus Would you consider this safe?

Robusto

If a bear wants to kill you, it's probably an unlucky circumstance. If a human wants to kill you, they'll find a way to get it done.

tchrist

02:44

On a scale of 1 to 100, where 1 is the least safe and 100 the most, Denver rates a 1.

Cerberus

@tchrist Not sure what I am seeing.

tchrist

> With a crime rate of 67 per one thousand residents, Denver has one of the highest crime rates in America compared to all communities of all sizes.

Cerberus

But I will believe you that some places in some cities are more dangerous.

tchrist

That's all types of crime, though, not violent crime.

Cerberus

Fun.

tchrist

02:45

@Cerberus Yes, and there are safer places in Denver and less safe places there.

Violent crime rate is only about 7 per 1000.

There's a great deal of property crime.

46 per 1000.

Car thefts 12 per 1000.

SEE Amsterdam vs Denver.

You're much safer there.

I always felt a lot safer in big European cities than ever I've felt here. With reason.

Walking alone at night is less safe in Denver than in Amsterdam.

Cerberus

Maybe so.

tchrist

Madrid is safer still.

Cerberus

@tchrist Though this sites seems to be based on "perception by site visitors".

tchrist

Sigh.

Ok.

Not real data then.

Cerberus

I didn't say that.

I just a remark on something important.

Vikas

02:52

@tchrist only?

tchrist

> With a crime index of 28, Amsterdam has low crime rate. Petty crimes, such as pickpocketing and bike theft, largely contribute to Amsterdam's...

Vikas

7 per 1000 violent crime seems high.

tchrist

@Vikas I am glad that you find it so.

And you are not wrong.

Cerberus

Yeah, many a tourist's pockets are picked.

And bikes are stolen a lot.

Though mine hasn't been stolen for maybe 8 or 9 years.

Ever since I put it in my cellar at night.

tchrist

@Vikas That's not homicide rate, but all violent crime. For homicide rate, New Orleans is much worse at 70 per 100k.

Vikas

02:56

What is the unit here for rate? Daily, monthly or yearly?

tchrist

Denver has 14 homicides per 100k.

@Vikas yearly

Vikas

👍🏾

tchrist

List of United States cities by crime rate

The following table of United States cities by crime rate is based on Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) statistics from 2019 for the 100 most populous cities in America that have reported data to the FBI UCR system. The population numbers are based on U.S. Census estimates for the year end. The number of murders includes nonnegligent manslaughter. This list is based on the reporting. In most cases, the city and the reporting agency are identical. However, in some cases such as Charlotte, Honolulu, and Las Vegas, the reporting agency has more than one municipality. Murder...

Vikas

I'm sure numbers in my country would be much higher.

Cerberus

Maybe that depends on the place?

Vikas

03:02

@Cerberus Yes, mostly in bigger cities.

tchrist

If crime rates are greater in bigger cities, this supports my instinct that cities are more dangerous than the country.

Less people, less crime. The animals don't crime you anything as much.

Boulder's violent crime rate is 0.25/1k or 250/100k.

Cerberus

Does that include crime by bears, mountain lions, elk, and snakes?

tchrist

@Cerberus We simply don't have those happening.

Mitch

I don't think the animal activities are considered crimes

Vikas

We have some "crimes" committed by stray dogs and snakes.

tchrist

03:08

It's super rare, rare beyond belief. Although there was a murder in Durango in 2021, we haven't had any here almost ever.

@Vikas rabid ones

Mitch

However the animal is usually punished by death for the slightest infraction

Robusto

Jun 8, 2021 at 1:05, by Robusto

While hitchhiking through Canada I saw a grizzly walk out of the woods about 50 yards from where I was trying to catch a ride. It was in Glacier National Park, and there wasn't another human being around, and me with nothing but my backpack. I had a Swiss Army Knife, which might as well have been a pillow for all the help it would have been.

Mitch

Unfair

tchrist

Animals that attack humans are always killed.

Robusto

The grizzly just went away.

Mitch

03:09

27 secs ago, by Mitch

Unfair

Vikas

Dog Attack Video: Stray Dog Suddenly Attacks Man After Minute of Petting, Shocking Clip Surfaces

►

Mute the audio as that's digusting.

Mitch

@Robusto wait..you were just in the presence of a grizzly?

Robusto

@Mitch That was decades ago.

tchrist

Since 1990, there have been only 25 lion attacks across the entire country. And that is not fatal attacks, but any.

Mitch

@Robusto oh. Whew.

tchrist

03:12

There are no end of videos from Boulder ring cameras of pumas walking around, nearly only ever at night.

Mitch

@tchrist that's more about dwindling mountain lion population than just being nice kitties

tchrist

@Mitch Colorado has 4k of them, California 4.5k. They are not very rare. It's only you crazies out east that killed all yours.

Mitch

@tchrist that does sound like a lot.

tchrist

It's thrilling.

Mitch

Back East they also deforested the entire area. It's only since pasture and cropland was taken up out west that the trees have grown back up around here

Robusto

03:14

But mountain lions are nearly perfect killing machines.

tchrist

Now, if you count domestic animals taken by lions or bobcats or lynx or wolves or bears, well, that's a different thing.

@Robusto Yes, they really are crazy good at it. 200 pounds of Bad Kitty.

Mitch

@Robusto if I had to choose an animal for my fighting proxy it'd have to be polar bear.

tchrist

I bet @Vikas has a healthy fear of leopards.

Cerberus

@Mitch Are those stronger than grizzly bears?

Robusto

@tchrist I'd be more afraid of tigers, actually.

tchrist

03:16

And yet as here, there are places in India where leopards roam the streets at night.

@Cerberus Probably, yes.

Cerberus

We are being invaded by wolves, in the country.

Mitch

@Cerberus they're bigger

Cerberus

OK noted.

Postponing my visit to the north pole.

Mitch

I think there's a theory that they are the same species as grizzlies but just colored different (and larger)

tchrist

@Robusto And you should be, in that you would have no chance whatsoever. With a leopard you would merely have next to no chance but you might survive it if lucky. That does not happen with tigers.

Cerberus

03:17

Hmm.

Robusto

@tchrist And tigers are crazy smart as well.

tchrist

In any case, mountain lions are generally a little bit bigger than leopards. And there are some rather smaller leopard subspecies.

Mitch

Like a German Shepard version of a Golden Retriever

tchrist

@Mitch Those are about even steven with a bobcat or lynx. They are nothing to a puma.

Well, not nothing.

My apologies.

They're dinner.

Robusto

The Insane Plot Armor of Cats

►

Mitch

03:19

Mmm... dinner

I'm thinking of a snack

tchrist

There are certainly places in India, large cities even, where leopards stalk at night.

> The common leopard, as the name suggests, is the most prevalent of the leopard species in India. They are found in almost all landscapes except the trans-Himalayas and the extremely dry arid western region. Remarkably adaptable, these leopards can even survive in major cities like Mumbai, Shimla, and Bangalore.

Mitch

The baboons and capuchin monkey gangs roaming the streets won't kill you but they will take your wallet.

tchrist

@Mitch And takeaway.

Mitch

@tchrist yes.

Straight from your hands

Little bastards

tchrist

Oh well, if that's all that you're worried about, we do have a similar problem where people's carryout boxes and such get pinched from them. Nobody ever expects the giant ravens.

Mitch

03:23

Though a gang of baboons vs a leopard... Not sure who would win.

tchrist

The giant ravens won't hurt you of course. They'll just seize your bag of carryout or dunkin' doughnuts or whatnot and fly away with it.

It happens all the time when people put them on the tops of their cars to fumble for their keys. Just hilarious.

Mitch

Not literally. But they'll run up into the trees

tchrist

The cats or the monkeys?

I'm thinking that monkey who flees to trees to escape cheetah is still easy prey for leopard.

Notice I've awarded the monkey "who" status. He'll still get eaten.

Robusto

youtube.com/shorts/PTJfqcx91I8

tchrist

Yes, they are smarter than a housecat. That said, housecats are also patient.

The thing to remember is the tiger is absolutely number one at being a tiger.

And that's a pretty scary thing.

Obligate carnivors.

Cerberus

03:31

Scary animals.

tchrist

Humans are terrible at assessing animal intelligence. We try to measure the tiger for human intelligence, and it doesn't always come out as good as we do as you might well imagine.

Cerberus

I do think we generally assess predators as more intelligent than other animals, even when they are not.

tchrist

But it is so damned good at being a tiger there's simply no contest. Being a tiger does not require monkey cleverness. It just requires being clever enough to stalk and eat you. It's really very good at that.

@Cerberus Yes, perhaps so.

Cerberus

E.g. cats seem smarter than they are.

2

tchrist

Even if the monkey outsmarts the tiger once, that doesn't mean he isn't catfood longterm.

Cerberus

03:35

They have big eyes, an intent gaze, quick and praecise movements, and patience.

And yet they do the stupidest things.

Things an ape never would.

Or even a crow, perhaps.

tchrist

I would not want to try to outsmart a tiger, given the stakes. Yes, I do outsmart my own cats easily, but they are incredibly resourceful, persistent, and clever in their own ways, routinely doing things that I never imagined they could ever do.

Yes, the smartest corvids are smarter than housecats.

Cerberus

I don't think cats are really stupid. Just stupider than we might intuit.

tchrist

Ravens and crows are about as smart as each other, broadly speaking, although we have usually found ravens to be a little smarter in general. I'm not sure that as a species they're all smarter than all crows as a species are, though.

> Ravens are generally considered to be slightly smarter than crows; both are highly intelligent birds, but ravens tend to show superior problem-solving abilities and complex cognitive skills in laboratory settings, often demonstrating a higher level of planning and tool usage compared to crows.

And bird intelligence is profoundly different from our own.

Not so profoundly different as octopus intelligence, which is simply alien, but still super different in how their brains work. It has to be that way: look at the brain sizes.

Birds have different brain structures than mammals have, and they have MUCH greater neuron density.

Vikas

@tchrist Leopards, no (because I'm not in reach of them). Snakes and barking dogs scare me.

Mitch

@Cerberus agreed. Their aloof and selfish demeanor mislead us into thinking they're as smart as dogs.

Vikas

03:43

I haven't seen wild animals much.

tchrist

The funny thing is, the asteroid that wiped out the rest of the dinosaurs, including most of the avian ones, seems to have been an evolutionary bottleneck that let only the really smart ones through. So now all birds have this super densely packed brain structure, something that not all pre-impact birds had let alone the rest of the dinosaurs.

Cerberus

@tchrist Yeah, that's impressive.

See also parrots.

And dinosaurs.

@Mitch Well...

@tchrist Oh, really, are you sure?

tchrist

@Cerberus I'm sure that I've seen multiple reports about this, yes.

Cerberus

OK, interesting.

tchrist

I was pretty surprised.

I can't recall any specifics, but it's what "we" now currently believe based on actual evidence. I don't know what that evidence is.

Mitch

03:47

Pigeons seem pretty stupid.

Just a feeling.

tchrist

Obviously it's skull scans of some sort but I don't know what that will show you.

@Mitch Never said all birds were brilliant. But they do all punch above their weight.

Mitch

They're all pretty light

Out of necessity

You know, the flying thing

Now flying cats... That would be awful.

We might as well give up then.

Just redirect all the atom bombs to ourselves and shoot them off

Walk directly into the ocean

Cerberus

Imagine The Birds but The Cats.

Mitch

@Cerberus nice. We could do that movie with AI

alphabet

Word of the day: cooties. According to Etymoline, it originally referred to "body lice"; it started as "British World War I slang, earlier in nautical use, said to be from Malay (Austronesian) kutu, the name of some parasitic, biting insect."

Cerberus

03:50

@Mitch Easily.

Mitch

@Cerberus for once an application of AI for artistic good

Kind of like that Woody Allen movie...

Cerberus

We don't know that...

alphabet

Dunno when it acquired the modern meaning, given by Wiktionary as "Any germ or contaminant, real or imagined, especially from the opposite gender (for pre-pubescent children)."

Mitch

What's Up, Tiger Lily?

What's Up, Tiger Lily? is a 1966 American comedy film directed by Woody Allen in his feature-length directorial debut. Allen took footage from a Japanese spy film, International Secret Police: Key of Keys (1965), and overdubbed it with completely original dialogue that had nothing to do with the plot of the original film. He both put in new scenes and rearranged the order of existing scenes, producing a one-hour movie from the 93 minutes of the original film. He completely changed the tone of the film from a James Bond clone into a comedy about the search for the world's best egg salad recipe...

tchrist

Ah. It's that all living birds have larger cerebral hemispheres than any other dinosaurs ever had, even the avian ones who didn't survive.

Mitch

03:59

@alphabet yep totally. In kindergarten that's what all the girls had. I mean it kinda makes sense, since girls were pretty gross then.

tchrist

We first started to get a feel for this back in 2006 with a Nature article by a Lawrence Whitmer, with several studies since, including a notable one in Science Advances in 2021 one of whose authors is named Christopher Torres. I'm sure it has to have been echoes of that lattermost work that diffused enough through other media forms for me to have caught wind of it.

Yeah, there are bunches of papers about all this now.

Here and there ones like in 2016 but then a notable uptick after the 2021 paper, with plenty in 2023 and 2024.

Also lots of recent papers from the past decade reexamining what we thought was going on with birds' brains but were quite wrong about.

here's one of those

Birds have primate-like numbers of neurons in the forebrain

Here's that 2021 Torres paper.

> Birds today are the most diverse clade of terrestrial vertebrates, and
understanding why extant birds (Aves) alone among dinosaurs survived the
Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction is crucial to reconstructing the
history of life. Hypotheses proposed to explain this pattern demand
identification of traits unique to Aves. However, this identification is
complicated by a lack of data from non-avian birds. Here, we interrogate
survivorship hypotheses using data from a new, nearly complete skull of

alphabet

04:17

@Mitch Teach your kiddos that the correct term is "chlamydia."

Xanne

05:29

Connections
Puzzle #603
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MetaEd

05:43

Wordle 1,324 2/6

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Strands #336
“Album of the year”
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Connections
Puzzle #602
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Xanne

Strands #337
“Order up!”
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Dannyu NDos

08:20

Chinese idiom of the day: Ghosts and goblins are the easiest to draw — Because they don't exist.

2

Xanne

09:37

@GratefulDisciple The Gulf is international waters, to which the usual rules (12 miles from shore under the control of the state to whom the shoreline belongs, and various other arrangements) apply. Thanks for doing my puzzle and commenting on it—it could have been better.

GratefulDisciple

@Xanne Yes, so multiplied by the length of the shoreline I wonder which country has the larger claim.

Connections
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Xanne

10:15

@GratefulDisciple It may be 200 nautical miles from shore. Cuba is also a Gulf nation, and Russian ships call at ports there. Traffic is heavy to the Houston etc. terminals for oil.

I think tje US shoreline is longest. The meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs landed in the area of the Yucatan peninsula. I think Chinese action (building up)islands in y

the south vhina seas) is more tfrearening than the Gulf ftuff,

GratefulDisciple

11:05

@Xanne Of course, Chinese action is threatening. But isn't the spat about naming the Gulf of Mexico just pandering to his constituents?

Mitch

12:43

@DannyuNDos nice. Is that a chengyu? Do you know the source/history/story behind it?

@alphabet cripes, now I have to clean my keyboard and get another cup of tea

M.A.R.

13:09

@alphabet exercise in pill form is probably levothyroxine

It's just as unpleasant if you take a lot of it though

CowperKettle

13:27

Robusto

13:41

#travle #782 +0 (Perfect)
✅✅✅
https://travle.earth

Robusto

13:57

#WhenTaken #342 (03.02.2025)

I scored 821/1000🏅

1️⃣📍68.3 km - 🗓️8 yrs - 🥇186/200
2️⃣📍309 km - 🗓️1 yrs - 🥇189/200
3️⃣📍1.0K km - 🗓️35 yrs - 🥉69/200
4️⃣📍3.7 km - 🗓️9 yrs - 🥇187/200
5️⃣📍124 km - 🗓️4 yrs - 🥇190/200

https://whentaken.com

Wordle 1,325 4/6

⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛
⬛⬛🟨⬛⬛
⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Connections
Puzzle #603
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟪🟪🟪🟪

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Potentially bad keyword in answer (1): What are the verbs that need a gerund after “to”?‭ by Fahmida‭ on english.SE

Robusto

Strands #337
“Order up!”
🔵🔵🟡🔵
🔵🔵🔵🔵

Daily Octordle #1106
🔟3️⃣
5️⃣6️⃣
9️⃣8️⃣
🕚4️⃣
Score: 56

Daily Sequence Octordle #1106
3️⃣4️⃣
6️⃣7️⃣
8️⃣9️⃣
🔟🕚
Score: 58

handan_toddler

14:22

What's your take on the big game @Robusto? Do you think they can do the never been done before 3-peet.

Robusto

Daily Extreme Octordle #1106
🕚🟥
6️⃣9️⃣
5️⃣7️⃣
🔟4️⃣
Score: 65

@handan_toddler No idea.

MetaEd

16:12

Wordle 1,325 3/6

⬛🟨⬛⬛🟩
⬛🟨🟨🟨🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

jlliagre

16:55

#WhenTaken #342 (03.02.2025)

I scored 881/1000🏆

1️⃣📍9.7 m - 🗓️11 yrs - 🥇182/200
2️⃣📍888 km - 🗓️0 yrs - 🥈173/200
3️⃣📍893 km - 🗓️17 yrs - 🥈137/200
4️⃣📍5.6 km - 🗓️2 yrs - 🥇198/200
5️⃣📍157 km - 🗓️3 yrs - 🥇191/200

https://whentaken.com

Wordle 1,325 5/6

⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛🟨🟨⬛⬛
⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛
🟨⬛⬛🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Daily Octordle #1106
8️⃣🔟
3️⃣🕚
9️⃣🕐
🕛7️⃣
Score: 73

jlliagre

17:19

Daily Sequence Octordle #1106
5️⃣8️⃣
9️⃣🔟
🕛🕐
⓮⓯
Score: 86

Daily Extreme Octordle #1106
5️⃣🕚
🔟🕛
🟥🟥
🟥🟥
Score: 90

Octordle is trolling me. It says "So close!"

Robusto

17:40

@jlliagre Hahaha. Call it a brat.

MetaEd

17:55

Strands #337
“Order up!”
🟡🔵🔵🔵
🔵🔵🔵🔵

Robusto

18:21

I’m a Federal Worker. Elon Musk’s Government Data Heist Is the Entire Ballgame.l

> On Friday night, reports emerged that Elon Musk’s aides had tussled with Office of Personnel Management and Treasury staffers while demanding access to troves of information about federal employees. And on Sunday, it was reported that Musk had ousted top officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development for refusing him access to classified security and personnel information.

> The Treasury’s system processes every payment to everyone from grandmothers waiting for their Social Security check to cancer researchers working to crack the cure. Now there’s a ham-fisted goon in an ill-fitting valet attendant’s coat rummaging in broad daylight through all of the keys—all of that private information, previously given in trust, handled with care, and regulated by law.

> This information demands careful management, and transparency around its collection and use. Its inadvertent disclosure could irreparably harm millions of American families. And it’s being taken by people that still can’t figure out how to send an email from within the government without having it flagged as a likely phishing attempt. Someone needs to do something.

> Maddeningly, though, the Musk-Miller-Trump administration seems to have convinced many outside commentators to credit its actions as some sort of masterful, calculated scheme. Take it from someone with a front-row seat: Ocean’s Eleven this is not. It’s a smash and grab. Careful and calculating actors wouldn’t brazenly break the law and dare authorities to respond.

Folks, this is where the whole democracy starts plummeting to the pavement.

MetaEd

19:14

Connections
Puzzle #603
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩

Mitch

20:15

@Robusto I'm stocking up on non-perishables and seeds.

Any ideas where to get a couple chickens and a rooster?

Oh

H5N1, you say?

dang. my wife just read the news.

So we're off to CostCo to buy the store.

alphabet

@Robusto Ugh, humans are awful. At this rate, you'll be needing us raccoons to bail you out within weeks.

Which is fine. We have plans for how to organize and whatnot. But don't expect too much, given the ingratitude you've shown our species, capisce?

MetaEd

22:22

Is there a Unicode character that visually symbolizes the end of a file? The closest I've found is end of proof: ∎

Mitch

@MetaEd Is there an ASCII control character for 'eof'?

Or is there any need for a special character for that? There are just no more characters?

Are you looking for an emoji? The 'end of proof' sounds good.

-1

A: What is the linguistic perspective on stylistic change over time?

If 'Language Change…' could be an A-level subject, how could that be taught to anyone not first qualified by studying to at least A-level, language or literature; preferably both? As a teacher discussing English, how could you bring yourself to ask about 'the linguists (anything)' with no possess...

@tchrist sorry it came to this but can you push the comment chain on that to its own chat?

tchrist

22:40

@Mitch Apparently.

I had thought you could have done that yourself, but maybe I forget how that all works.

@MetaEd What would be the purpose of an explicit character to signal that you don't plan to provide any further characters on that io stream at the immediate moment?

@Mitch @MetaEd ^^^

There's a FILE SEPARATOR / FS character in the C0 controls set, but that's for a different purpose obviously.

There are also funky keycap like TLA type symbols for the C0 stuff way up high in Unicode, but that's just for labelling purposes.

The operating system tells you when it cannot read any more data, but how that condition is represented in your program and indeed even how transient the condition is varies wildly by what you're reading and how you're reading it. I cam tell you what libc and Unix, and of course C and Perl, do in all possible cases. But it's complicated.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…