English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

@Færd True.

I try to avoid antibiotics at all costs. Well, that makes it sound like it's somehow hard but it's really easy.

I hate to say this, I really do, but it looks like China will be getting off easy compared to the fates of the rest of us.

@RegDwigнt Congratulations on a strong constitution. I can't do that.

12:03 AM

What is ROW?

Rest of World.

@Færd but that's the thing. That's why the constitution is strong. Constantly taking antibiotics, especially starting at a young age, makes you weaker not stronger.

Look at what China's two curves looked like when they were at our numbers.

@tchrist Remarkable differences there.

12:05 AM

Remember Newton's Second Law. Antibiotics make you resistant to germs exactly as much as they make germs resistant to you.

Then remind yourself that the Y-axis is logarithmic.

Right

@RegDwigнt The damage was probably done when neither me nor my guardians knew any better.

The ROW has super-scarier curves.

At a very young age. Or that I'm just susceptible to bacterial infection and my immune system can't match up.

@tchrist Well China's response was a lot more organized and harsh.

I get these damned sinus infections much too often. I know what this is.

12:07 AM

After the first lapse. That fatal lapse.

@tchrist I didn't know I would ever be happy to hear about someone's sickness, but that's reassuring.

@Færd You have to be. It makes all the difference in the world. Play with these interactive graphics charts to see exactly why: nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/13/opinion/…

@Færd possibly so. And nowadays we're all getting antibiotics through the food chain. There's traces of them in our water, our fish, the eggs, the milk.

@RegDwigнt It's the factory farms.

Yes, any chicken you buy in a supermarket is 50% meat and 50% antibiotics.

Don't get me started, I'm too queasy for that.

12:13 AM

@tchrist too bad none of them charts are even displayed on this 32-bit system.

Only by going full-on dragon now do we have any hope.

What happened to the Internet. We can still play Flash games from the 90s. But I can't view half the sites from 2020, in 2020.

@RegDwigнt Really??

I rather doubt the width of your hardware registers in bits is really what's at fault here. But I may be wrong.

@tchrist I'm going to share that.

12:15 AM

@Færd Eye-opening, isn't it?

@RegDwigнt I'm almost vegan.

Good for you.

@RegDwigнt So scrolling down does nothing?

@tchrist Indeed. Maybe too late for Iran, but still I'm going to share it.

@tchrist nope. First thing I tried.

12:16 AM

I haven't bought a chicken in like 35 years. At least not to eat.

Just the other paragraphs come into view describing the other charts that are also absent.

That's terrible.

I'll check it out at work. 64-bit Linux there. Will work fine.

@RegDwigнt How old is your system.

Not sure when I'll get to work again though. Maybe they'll close down everything in the next two days.

@Færd Windows Vista. Last 32-bit Chrome build ever released. Has been displaying the message "this browser is out of date" for six years now.

12:18 AM

It mostly is here. At least, anybody who can work from home does so.

Schools are shut down.

Apple, Twitter, Google etc are all working from home here.

Where here=Boulder.

@RegDwigнt Keep your cool you've got 6 more years to go.

I've got many more years to go. Not so sure about the machine though.

@tchrist We are teaching our students thru Telegram channels and video calls.

Is it working?

Just got off the phone with my son, the one who got married last fall. They were going to take their delayed honeymoon in two weeks to ... guess where?

12:19 AM

JAPAN!

Italy.

@tchrist It's certainly better than nothing.

@RegDwigнt Oooh, that's a bingo!

Thank you, Hans.

@Robusto Is that the one at the scary bioconf?

12:21 AM

@tchrist No, it's the gambler who married a doctor.

So I don't feel too worried about his health at this point.

Well that's a good gamble in this day and age.

Jinx.

Prescient, wasn't he.

jinx

Double jinxes cancel each other out.

Maybe that will be Trump's strategy against the corona.

It sure has been so far.

Fuck that bloated idiot.

12:22 AM

No thanks, I'm more into Russian chicks, personally.

@RegDwigнt He's never had a beer in his life. "It's my only redeeming quality," he actually said.

I bet even that is a lie.

I tried to watch the idiot's speech earlier. And complained at length to tchrist that I just couldn't manage.

Here's where we need Peter Lorre back.

You imbecile, you idiot.

►

He's so contemptible you might feel pity for him if he wasn't at the helm.

12:25 AM

I didn't want for him to be at the helm. He did.

He used up all the feelings we could have had for him by being utterly contemptible of the feelings of others.

That's like, when they count being drunk or stoned as mitigating circumstances.

Nonono that's not how it works. That's not mitigating at all.

Jimmy Cliff - The Harder They Come

►

I don't know. I'd be more angry at a system that produces such a leader.

I know that face. Who's that again.

Oh, the you can get it if you really want it guy.

12:28 AM

@RegDwigнt Thanks we have our own monsters.

@Færd Name a system that doesn't risk a shit-smeared dog's ass of a leader?

@Robusto America for a couple hundred years before 2016.

Jul 29 '14 at 0:12, by RegDwigнt

Every country has the government it deserves.

@Færd Agreed. We thought we were immune, that reason would prevail. It was even written into our Constitution. Then we got Fox News and the worst president EVER.

@RegDwigнt Nah that ain't true.

12:29 AM

@RegDwigнt Not true. We didn't deserve this.

Russians don't deserve Putin.

Brits don't deserve Boris Johnson.

Etc., etc., etc.,

Now everything is tilted toward the moneyed interests.

But you have to agree, we have the best government money can buy.

@Robusto It's not like you were flawless before that, but wahtever was simmering down there reached a cusp in 2016.

@Færd It had been coming for a long time. A nip here, a tuck there, and the only thing remaining is for a Republican coup de main and then it really is toilet-time for this country.

@Færd it is only once we recognize that it is true that things can change at all.

Saying "it is not true" is the very thing this statement tries to address and combat.

@Robusto I hope you can remove him soon.

David Fincher's FIGHT CLUB (1999) - Only After We've Lost Everything Are We Free To Do Anything

@Færd For all our sakes. Yours included.

►

12:33 AM

Biden won't be any better. Just look at what his son did to the Ukraine in just a year. What do you think the dad will do to the US in four.

Oh, right "I can see clearly now" is also Jimmy Cliff's.

Well that's one prophetic song title after another, how about that. The harder they come, you can get it if you really want, I can see clearly now.

@RegDwigнt You know how hard we've been trying to change our own? In February alone, 3 times more people (protesters) were killed on the streets than have died from coronavirus so far. So I doubt that we deserve this.

@RegDwigнt Fuck that, you couldn't be more wrong. I can't believe you are spouting Republican conspiracy theories. Have you been watching Putin's ads on Facebook again?

@Robusto Amen

@Robusto it's not a conspiracy theory, it's a fact about the Ukrainian legal system. I have friends there. My ex-wife is half-Ukrainian.

Biden has serious flaws. But he's still infinitely better than Trump.

12:36 AM

That's how we got Trump. By a whole lot of people going "Hillary is even worse".

In any case, he only has to be NOT TRUMP and he'll already be better. And I don't need you to what-about-Hunter-Biden me. All I have to do is turn on Fox News and it'll be all over the place.

A false dichotomy is a false dichotomy.

I'm sure Mussollini wasn't as bad as Hitler. But these must not be your only options.

Fuck, Biden isn't Mussolini. Ain't even close.

In a country of 300 million people, you have literally millions of really decent honest smart folk.

Best case, he picks Amy Klobuchar as his running mate, then gets the coronavirus and she's our president.

@RegDwigнt We're playing way past that. In a very real sense, we're playing for the species this time.

12:38 AM

@Robusto Better already. So how about he then picks Neil deGrasse Tyson instead,

Imagine the running mate Neil would pick after that.

NdeG has his own closet full of skeletons.

There are some forms if corruption that don't exactly offend the law. Like money in election campaigns, funding and buying politicians, and yes nepotism, could be technically legal to some countries including the US.

Biden may very well fall under that.

@Robusto that is a very funny thing to say in the context of "who'd be better than Trump".

But Trump is too corrupt even against those weak standards.

Politics is still the art of the possible. So let's not get all dewy about electing philosopher kings and all that.

@RegDwigнt Same for your what-aboutism regarding Hunter Biden vs. Trump's family.

12:40 AM

Politics has long become the opposite of art.

Diplomacy yes. But there's none of that left in politics.

@Robusto I never said "what about".

I pointed out a simple truth.

@RegDwigнt Said like a Fox News announcer.

Sticks and stones, Rob.

Now you're just drunk enough not to recognize the depth of my feeling about this.

Your feelings are too deep to recognize the obvious.

The lesser of two evils is not a way to win at anything.

You should not be choosing between evils to begin with.

So your suggestion is that we just say fuck it, let's reelect the bloated idiot?

12:42 AM

As you said, you just don't deserve that shit.

Choosing the lesser of two evils is called rationalism.

Fuck that, I say.

IMO, Biden is vastly the lesser of two evils.

@Robusto My suggestion is you say fuck it and not elect any of the bloated idiots on display.

In which case Trump gets reelected. Don't be fatuous, Jeffrey.

I'm going to bed. Peace out.

flies out of the crossfire

12:44 AM

@Færd always only having two evils to choose from is not rationalism.

@Robusto well I already mentioned to tchrist how that's going to happen anyway.

All of this conversation is purely hypothetical.

@RegDwigнt Fuck that. If I really believed that I'd kill myself. So, here I am, standing on a chair with a noose around my neck and you're telling me it's hopeless anyway so just give in to the void. Thanks, friend.

There are many wonderful places in this world. And you've been to a great many of them.

You of all people know for a fact that you don't have to put up with this.

Wow, you really are trying to talk me into suicide.

Come on now.

peeks in

Sorry for jumping in the conversation but you could agree to disagree.

12:50 AM

One's homeland is never the be-all and end-all. You never had a say in where you get born. But you always have a say in where you stay.

If only that was true.

@RegDwigнt That's just the world being fucked up. Nothing to do with my rationalism.

You can do nothing about the situation in DC. Just like I can do nothing about the situation in the Kremlin. But I can do something about my situation. Just like you can do about yours.

Don't ask what you can do for your country. Ask what your country can do for you.

@RegDwigнt For the great majority of people, changing where you live is also difficult.

I am not talking to the great majority of people.

I am trying to get a friend off a chair.

If your country shows you the middle finger, show it both yours. Preferably from Norway. Or Switzerland.

I could be sitting in the Kremlin right now. But they don't want me in the Kremlin. So I say shrug and go somewhere else where I'm needed.

@Robusto That guy is going to get us all killed.

1:02 AM

Guess what tho. He'll survive.

@RegDwigнt Oh, does it have a Tower like London?

I have enough LEGO to build my own Tower of London any place I choose.

Doesn't help with the moving, but does help with shelter.

@Færd There have been pictures of mass graves being created for the virus victims there...

@RegDwigнt Maybe. Maybe not.

Cockroaches and rats always survive.

Especially when given all the amenities of the presidential office.

1:06 AM

Scattering during the pandemiconium?

Now I feel like reading not McCarthy but Poe.

@RegDwigнt The one where Lavrov planted all those bugs?

The one where the Russians planted the biggest bug of them all, yes.

It's awfully glitchy.

I do wonder how the next couple weeks will pan out for musicians in particular.

That's a lot of loss of revenue.

1:09 AM

any kind of entertainment

Like, I can just go on paid leave like most everyone in most every industry.

live

Yeah that's the operative word.

Because when you're like a painter, you can just lock yourself up in your room and just work on your painting. Or when you're a writer you write your next book. Or when you're a composer, you compose.

But what if you're a performing artist.

so are we offing ourselves now or what?

like dancing about architecture

construction can still go on

I imagine even McDonald's can.

All kinds of things.

But not live theatre or dance or music.

1:11 AM

or sports

> “It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.”

not that I would notice that gone

Well that's already happened. But there's so much money in sports they are vomiting it out of their ears.

No sympathy there.

None.

There will be no losers.

I secretly hope that after a couple months without football everybody notices how nothing is missing and it'll just stay dead forever.

1:13 AM

notice what?

It's been dead to me since I was ever.

Exactly. But now everyone else can get a taste of the liberation.

Imagine all that money poured into something sensible instead.

Like oh I dunno, healthcare.

Lib lib lib.

they can put the leisure energy towards home improvement or gardening

Yeah imagine all those sportsmen building houses not made out of paper. That don't fall over at the first gust of wind.

@Robusto all I'm saying is that "better than Trump" is not a standard. We can't set the bar that low. That right there is what gets us into the "every country has the government it deserves" situation. Anyone is better than Trump. The second-worst person in the country is better than Trump. But the country must not be run by the second-worst person. It must be run by the best person.

1:28 AM

@RegDwigнt Then what do you suggest?

What do you mean, what do I suggest?

What do you suggest?

I am not invested in any of this.

Nope. You're the complainer, you need to offer the alternative.

I am not complaining. I am not ruled by Trump. Thank fuck.

You lucky bastard.

Luck has very little to do with it. Is my whole point.

1:30 AM

When is Merkel going to hand things over to some one else?

Very soon. I don't remember the exact date.

She announced it at the beginning of this term that there'd be no next term.

I thought the #2 lady with the long name pulled herself out.

Yeah that's a thing that happened recently.

Things are happening that are not corona related

She's from this city here. Where I'm typing this. We don't think high of her at all.

1:32 AM

But who's the next in line?

Let's wait it out and see who's left after the corona. Them's politicians are all terribly old.

all the one's who've been shaking hands with that guy

Yeah a friend of mine refused to shake my hand earlier today and I was like oh fuck you're right. Stupid me.

We bumped our shoes into one another.

fist bumps, despite touching are way way less ... transferring

I saw a chart

it kind proves it.

I think a thoughtful nodding should be enough

That requires thoughts. I don't have any of those.

1:35 AM

I hate the handshake high five fist bump elbow jab stuff. It's really bizarre.

What about snogging?

That transfers mono.

Ah. Not for me, then. I'm all into Dolby 7:3.

SCIENCE!

Fucking magnets, how do they work...

1:36 AM

haha...

blankets... how do they work?

Well you put pox on them and then profit.

ew

unless you have vaccines

Hard to get by pox these days. You have to go to Russia.

But most people elsewhere are actually no longer vaccinated against pox.

it's coming out of the melting permafrost

or is that anthrax?

I still have that vaccination scar from my childhood. None of the people in this country have it. Easy game for me.

1:38 AM

or is it whatever they were testing on that island in the middle of the Aral Sea, which is no longer an island because there's no more sea.

@RegDwigнt That's an easy game to play, that's an easy thing to say.

Well nothing is an island really. It's all a single piece of rock.

@RegDwigнt Let that be my epitaph

@Mitch yeah fair point, the blankets are all sold out here...

@RegDwigнt Here it is rice and toilet paper

@Mitch I can write a better one. Specifically for you. Put it to music, too.

1:40 AM

wait... you've already been over that

@RegDwigнt I think you owe Rob one

Rice I didn't check actually. But I think I saw from the corner of my eye that that aisle was full to the brim as usual.

The spaghetti tho. Who the fuck can eat that much spaghetti.

Oh man.

Spaghetti is the food of gods

I remember in the Soviet Union my grandma would buy all the noodles she could get, any chance she got.

You should change the sauce though.

Put them in storage on our balcony.

It all sat there through wind and weather, year after year, summers as winters.

Then twenty years later we threw it all away.

Nobody can eat that much noodles.

1:42 AM

Here is a mixed crowd, so in the grocery store I went to today all the shelves were fine except for the empty tp, empty rice and pasta, and empty.... wait for it...

empty tortillas.

not tortilla chips

but the soft flat tortillas

Well you don't have bread in your country, so that is the next best thing.

Oh. Hm... I didn't look down that aisle.

Bread in the US is not that good.

It's like why bother.

As I said, bread in the US is not a thing.

Just like cheese.

Oh the cheese in the US is great.

If you like one kind of cheese

just different shades of orange

Well yeah. It's like you have soccer moms but no soccer.

1:45 AM

au contraire.. we totally have great soccer, but only for little kids.

but that helps us not have soccer for hooligans

which frankly is the evil you have to bear for getting reasonably priced health care.

Your soccer hooligans are just called football players.

And are paid much more generously.

and are wimps.

because they wear pads.

But yeah, as we've established, let's just not have any sports for a year, and then we'll work from there.

what are these sports oof which you speak?

Chess, mainly.

Darts and curling.

Math olympics. That kind of shit.

1:47 AM

It takes lots of stamina to last a professional chess tournament

Darts, not as much.

I'd love to be an announcer for math olympics.

@Mitch for the viewers, yes.

@Mitch bring it on.

"Check out Miles Standoffish on the plate, rearranging his 'pocket protector', he's gotta prove 2+2=4 like he's got a bee up his butt."

That's all i got

Brilliant. You can do that after the year has passed. If anyone still remembers what math olympics is. Or wants to have it back.

I think that's all we'll be doing because it barely needs pencil and paper, and that'll be all that is left if civilization.

which reminds me. TC is taking all this pretty hard.

I mean sure life is shit but he's taking it out on us.

Many people are.

As the German saying goes, Wait and drink tea.

Not sure how or why that'd be a German saying, but it is.

1:54 AM

@Mitch I beg your pardon?

Q: I need a girl's opinion on this apology I wrote for a girl

Haha.

Fight.

-1

Background: I finally caught feelings for this girl that had a crush on me for around three years and one day she started to act different around me (not the usual) and I got a little upset and my friend could tell so he decided to confront her about it and in that conversation at some point we s...

Jesus F. Christ what is this even.

The funniest part is how there is an SE site where it is on-topic.

@tchrist It's all awful but I don't always want to be reminded of it.

I'm afraid for the next couple weeks we've entered the realm of not having a choice.

I used to mock Cerberus but now I find even myself participating.

@Mitch If you think I'm "taking it out on you", then you can keep your fucking chatroom.

Now now.

Let's not get a virus between us.

2:03 AM

@tchrist my apologies.

I feel like everyone's got each other on the wrong foot today.

A horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad day.

Then again, better than spreading it all out thin.

We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Wait and drink tea.

Aren't you composing an opera at the moment?

With Marvel characters?

Tristan und Isolde? Antman and the Wasp?

They're not an item but you think they'd make a nice couple.

skullpatrol

6:03 AM

> coronavirus (by 1969) is so called for the spikes that protrude from its membranes and resemble the tines of a crown or the corona of the sun.

A: Subject Verb agreement with comma-aside of a different pluralization

8:14 AM

Guys if a topic or a member causes you discomfort, you have quite a few remedies at your disposal (eg, raising a new topic, coming back later, not paying attention, ignoring a person) other than resorting to policing the discourse and creating a climate of self-censorship.

Just saying.

CowperKettle

> Identification and authentication of users who are employees of the Operator

Are there alternatives to this phrasing?

> Creation of Active Directory accounts, as well as assignment of a basic set of rights to users are performed on the basis of requests received via the POP request processing system.

I'm editing an other's translation and it feels like I should replace are with is here.

Hm. Looks like I might be correct with this hunch.

2

For starters that bit of "additional information" which is included in your sentence is called a "non-restrictive clause," and you're right to call it an aside. Non-restrictive clauses are added to sentences to provide additional information/context to the sentence without changing the overall me...

skillpatrol

11:53 AM

virus

Noun: virus (countable and uncountable, plural viruses or (proscribed) viri or (proscribed) virii)

Wikispecies
(archaic) Venom, as produced by a poisonous animal etc.
A submicroscopic, non-cellular structure consisting of a core of DNA or RNA surrounded by a protein coat, that requires a living host cell to replicate, and often causes disease in the host organism.
2001, Leslie Iversen, Drugs: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford 2001, p. 64)
Viruses are the smallest and most simplified forms of life.

(3 more not shown…)

> 5. Viruses are the smallest and most simplified forms of life.

life

Noun: life (usually uncountable, plural lives)

(uncountable) The state of organisms preceding their death, characterized by biological processes such as metabolism and reproduction and distinguishing them from inanimate objects; the state of being alive and living.
(biology) The status possessed by any of a number of entities, including animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, and sometimes viruses, which have the properties of replication and metabolism.
The animating principle or force that keeps an inorganic thing or concept metaphorically...

> "If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable…. I dreamt, once, that I was there…. Heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out, into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights, where I woke sobbing for joy."
—Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

2:19 PM

@Mitch no opera, no. Some SATB, yes. A string quartet. Fifty waltzes all at once. And a large autobiographical piece, but no idea what to even call that. Certainly not an opera. Maybe a symphonic poem or something.

And bits and pieces of a ballet for which I have no libretto. It just sounds like a ballet. Shrug.

2:40 PM

@RegDwigнt There are so many things wrong with that, but I'll just leave it at this analogy: It's like a person on a ship disdaining to throw a lifesaver to someone drowning because it's not of the finest quality. It's almost breathtakingly blasé.

3:12 PM

@Færd got it.

@tchrist I'm sorry, it was callous of me.

skullpatrol

yeah, you're a room owner

btw, where's Mr Shiney?

Gigili

4:07 PM

@Færd How would that help? Sure everyone here, especially the frequent users, is perfectly aware of those options, sometimes they just want to communicate or let the other party know what they think.

You're not helping, you're just making it worse.

> If you haven’t lost track of how many languages you’ve learned, you haven’t learned enough of them yet.

That's truly inspiring.

SmokeDetector

5:45 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Potentially bad ns for domain in answer, username similar to website in answer (62): What does it mean “Alight” here? by Ink Well on english.SE

M.A.R.

6:22 PM

@Mitch 600 new messages and you wonder why it takes a toll?

It seems unavoidable. There is always friction when people talk too much too often in a chatroom

Well, write, not talk, which I think contributes to the whole thing

Gigili

7:17 PM

@M.A.R. flagged as offensive

7:31 PM

Does get in "Did you get the joke?" and it-getter and so on translate into a similar verb in any other European language?

GT gives avoir in French but I'm not sure.

7:54 PM

@Færd You might look at kapieren or raffen in German. They have the sense of catching on to (savvying) something.

8:13 PM

@Robusto Great!