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12:00 AM
Don't worry though, in second grade it is not a common word.
 
I guess that's why they call him Ken Jennings.
 
Oh that's smart.
 
See? Hiding in plain sight all this time.
 
The math checks out. As does the anatomy.
 
"If it's from a teacher there should be a master list to practice from." Yeah, and if it's a teacher I fear for the education of those kids.
@tchrist How else are the Republicans gonna get rid of Medicare and Social Security?
 
12:02 AM
I dunno I'm kinda used to uneducated kids by now.
The magic of the Internet.
 
Uneducated kids become uneducated adults.
2
And then they vote for Trump.
The system works.
 
Yes it's quite brilliant actually I can't see a flaw.
But maybe I will Ken it one day.
 
What alarms me is not how dumb people are, but how absolutely incurious they are as well.
 
@skullpatrol And switch from french fries to smoothies!
 
yup
 
12:09 AM
@Robusto a couple days someone on MuseScore posted "don't judge me, this is not my theory, I'm just passing it on: what if the Corona virus was invented by the government to see how much control they have over you".
 
Yikes
 
Meaning to say, these people are incurious even to the fact that there is more than one country in the world. They think there is "the" government. Of "the" country.
 
RE: Politics.SE
 
I commented as much, adding that if "the" government invented the virus, how come they're failing so hard at fighting it. In an election year, no less.
Never read any replies.
But there were many.
 
@RegDwigнt I don't know but if you hum a few bars...
hah ah ah ha
ha ha ha
cough
 
12:11 AM
That's not humming. That's hahming.
Try again.
 
wet cough
swallows
whew... not covid-19
unless...
 
Plot twist: it's covid-21.
 
There's no stopping you from having more than just covid-19.
 
Coming soon
 
I still haven't watched the first 18.
 
12:13 AM
jaws vs godzilla
 
That I did watch.
 
21, 22,...
 
bambi vs thumper
the rabbit gets it in the tail
 
Thumper is a really awesome psychedelic rhythm game that you should play.
 
can I get that on the interweb app store?
 
12:14 AM
You can even play it on VR. If you're brave.
 
feels like the last three hours of 2001: A Space Odyssey
 
If by that you mean it feels like the exact opposite of that, then yes.
 
then yes.
 
This very second on one of my scores someone commented
> When your just to good
I don't know what to reply. "Always"?
 
Just to good.
 
12:23 AM
There not wrong
 
Is that like, good to very good?
 
*too
 
I know, I know.
 
Fuck, I misspelled "to"
 
gah. dangit.
 
12:27 AM
> Here's the first 3 bars, you write the rest!
Uh no thanks mate
I'd write the rest but then it'd be totally ruined by the first three bars.
 
that's a challenge
 
My new favorite hobby is hanging out on the MuseScore forums and then just posting incredibly famous quotes as non-sequitur answers.
 
do it and remove the first three
 
Like, "if you look long enough into the abyss...", or "all happy marriages are the same...". You know. That kind of famous.
 
@RegDwigнt You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, but you can't go back home again.
 
12:29 AM
And then I sit back and watch not a single person recognize the quote as such.
 
so perceptive
 
Every single time I get a million upvotes and a trillion people commenting "whoa that's really deep".
On a few select occasions I will then bluntly point out that none of my comments are mine. I don't write them, I only type them up.
To which the reply, invariably, is "whoa that's even deeper".
 
I think you're exaggerating. THere's not a trillion people on MuseScore.
 
Well it's like you're watching the Titanic and you're convinced it's a trillion minutes long.
Likewise, in a company of three idiots you feel like in a company of millions.
 
that movie goes on forever.
let the guy drown already
 
12:32 AM
Whoa that's really deep.
 
haha
 
@Mitch that's another great one, the one by Lennon. "Being honest won't make you many friends but it will make you the right ones".
Go post that on MuseScore right now. On any thread at all. You'll be king of the land.
They will think you're even smarter than we think you are.
 
woah
how about quoting famous melodies? do people notice those?
 
BTW quiz time. How many of you Murkins have lived through the last toilet-paper crisis? Ca. 1973. When Johnny Carson made that stupid joke that caused a nationwide shortage of toilet paper that took two years to fully recover from.
 
E-E-E-G-G-F-E-D-C-C-D-E-E -EE
 
12:37 AM
@Mitch I'm sorry, what's a "melody"? I'm on MuseScore, remember.
 
@RegDwigнt ?
 
@Mitch well I guess @Rob or @tchrist can tell you, then.
@Mitch whose genome are you sequencing there and why? Is it the corona's?
 
@RegDwigнt gets real quiet
 
I mean virus DNA is pretty short, like 3 or 4
 
12:40 AM
Yeah I know. And it's like just the same four letters repeated. Really basic stuff.
 
"God, I hope I never have to hear him say 'nipple' again."
Stuff like that?
 
That is more than four letters by my count, but yeah, close enough.
 
Nice.
posts on covid-19 instagram
 
Oh, and you can also post palindromes on MuseScore.
Instantly puts you on page one of Top Users.
Ealier today I created the discussion "Magpies are really quite beautiful" and now people are posting images of magpies at each other.
 
12:57 AM
Those are good birds.
 
I see some in my garden all the time.
Not quite of the Asian gamut, but the standard European one is quite gorgeous already.
The hint of blue is indescribable and no camera can adequately capture it.
 
An iridescent blue.
 
They misspelled "Hammer time".
 
1:30 AM
Uhh.
 
@RegDwigнt Why do Northern Mockingbirds speak Russian?
Check it out here.
The northern mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) is the only mockingbird commonly found in North America. This bird is mainly a permanent resident, but northern birds may move south during harsh weather. This species has rarely been observed in Europe. This species was first described by Linnaeus in his Systema Naturæ in 1758 as Turdus polyglottos. The northern mockingbird is known for its mimicking ability, as reflected by the meaning of its scientific name, "many-tongued mimic". The northern mockingbird has gray to brown upper feathers and a paler belly. Its tail and wings have white patches which...
Go down to the audio, and I'll be damned if the text of the song ain't in Russian.
Maybe they're just that good as mimics.
 
1:52 AM
@RegDwigнt You missed my Elsterade with Matt earlier, the whole Corvid-19 thing.
 
@tchrist How's your illness?
 
@Robusto Halfway through the antibiotics, and incredibly less sick. I mean, I feel not sick, but know better than to stop early.
 
@tchrist Terrific. Maybe that's what I could use.
Mine just won't go away.
 
My friend from Los Alamos went up to Bandolier birdwatching this evening, but her phone kept cutting out when she was trying to voice me.
 
Nice.
Los Alamos is shut down, btw. My neighbor works there and he told me it's a ghost town now.
 
1:57 AM
@Robusto You want a ten-day course of (=brand-name Augmentin with) 850mg amoxicillin combined with 125mg clavulanate, NOT just the normal seven-day course of 500mg amoxicillin. That's because ENT stuff digs in too deep.
 
Yeah. I never get -cillin antibiotics because I'm supposedly allergic. So I get whatever else there is.
 
oops
They exist.
But I just couldn't kick it on my own.
 
I seriously doubt I'm allergic. But that's what I've been told since I was a kid.
Doctors have told me it's probably bogus, but none were willing to test that theory.
It's amazing how little room for nuance there is in medicine.
 
No, it's your doctors not wanting the risk.
 
Of course.
 
2:08 AM
@Robusto easiest question all week. Your mockingbirds speak Russian because they are mocking you. DUH.
In fact that lets them mock you and the Russians all at the same time.
Talk about killing two non-birds with one stone.
@tchrist nah, I didn't miss it. (And frankly I am not quite sure I ever will.)
 
@RegDwigнt But how can it register if I don't know what they're saying?
 
listening to Partisan Song
 
@Robusto they are not doing it for your entertainment. They are doing it for theirs.
Mockingbirds are like that.
@Cerberus no communism in this chat.
 
But it's so nice!
 
2:38 AM
Graffiti in Yekaterinburg
 
Hah.
I could make out gorode (city?), relikvia, and Indiana Dzjons.
So I think I get it.
 
2:55 AM
I have this song stuck in my head now..
Damn you Youtube
are we allowd to video links?
 
@GWarner Quaerendo invenietis.
 
 
5 hours later…
8:08 AM
@Cerberus Can you make out this one?
 
 
2 hours later…
10:21 AM
Hi there
Can I say <<I like romantic movies in general, as well as romance books.>>?
 
10:31 AM
sure
 
And if I write "as" instead of "as well as"?
Is it the same?
 
I would stay with "as well as"
 
Moreover, in this sentence
<<Fanny doesn’t get along with the members of her new family, except with Edward.>>
Should I say "except" or "except with"?
Thanks
 
"except"
 
thanks
 
10:36 AM
np
 
10:51 AM
Is this sentence correct?
<<Then, as Mary starts daydreaming about what to do with Tom’s heritage considering that her future husband would be the heir, Edward feels disgusted because of her behavior and he decides to not marry her anymore>>
"Here is why" or "this is why"? Are they the same?
to readmit someone to/at...?
 
11:33 AM
What about instead "The main themes in the film are the concept of love, the marriage, the family and the morality"?
Should I use "the" all these times?
 
12:01 PM
0
Q: What is special about English and why is it special?

MasterWinWhat is so special about English? Like about listening, reading, writing and speaking. What is special about them and why is that special?

@Curio it is certainly grammatical. Whether it is easy to read or pleasant on the ear is another matter.
@Curio they are not the same. As a simple example, both can be used as a preface to an explanation, but only one can be used as the epilogue to it.
As a simple rule of thumb, two different exressions are never the same. That is why they are two different expressions.
@Curio context will be needed. The preposition is not governed by what comes before it. The preposition is governed by what comes after it.
For example, "to readmit someone over/instead of/from between/out from" are all likewise possible.
@Curio look closer to notice that you are not using "the" throughout.
Why is it the concept of the family and the concept of the marriage, but the concept of love and not the concept of the love?
 
12:47 PM
@CowperKettle I can't make out any of the words.
I praesume it is the climate girl, being happy about what this is doing to the environment.
 
1:31 PM
@Curio You shouldn't use 'the' for any of them. They are all abstract nouns.
> "The main themes in the film are the concept of love, marriage, family and morality"
If you use 'the' for any of them, then that refers to a specific marriage. Then You'd be talking about "the concept of the morality" which is incongruous. Which morality? And the concept of that particular one? Sounds weird.
@Cerberus The climate girl? Is that like Grammar Girl? Tank Girl? Girls Gone Wild On Florida Beaches Then Got Coughed On?
 
> The first formal process for curbing the spread of infection by detaining travelers from an affected region until their health was proved was instituted in what is now Dubrovnik, Croatia, in 1377, against the bubonic plague. (This temporal buffer was originally 30 days, but when that proved too short, it was extended to 40 days, or quaranta giorni, from which we derive the word “quarantine.”)
Forty seems to be a magic number throughout civilization. Noah's flood lasted forty days and forty nights.
The Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years.
> The number 40 is found in many traditions without any universal explanation for its use. In Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and other Middle Eastern traditions it is taken to represent a large, approximate number, similar to "umpteen".
Wikipedia
See, this is what inflation gets you. In ancient times forty was synonymous with "a lot." Now we use gazillions.
 
2:03 PM
Oct 29 '15 at 14:46, by RegDwigнt
Forty is many. Just like apple is fruit.
Jul 3 '18 at 10:06, by RegDwigнt
Jesus and the 40 days in the desert. Ali Baba and the 40 robbers.
Apr 16 '19 at 19:04, by RegDwigнt
Moscow used to be called the city of forty times forty churches. Now that's obviously using "forty" in the Biblical sense of "many", so many times many. But surprisingly enough the actual figures documented are not far behind, ranging between 800 and 1500.
We don't need the NYT or the Wikipedia to tell us that. We can just read this chat.
I should remind you we also invented social distancing.
And pineapples.
Give us some time and we will even invent magpies before anyone else does.
 
@Cerberus Yes, she says "you gave me back my childhood!"
> Scientists believe the end of the Cretaceous period came with a “rock larger than Mt. Everest traveling twenty times faster than a bullet” slammed into the Gulf of Mexico leading to a 1,000ft tall tsunami and a “blizzard of meteorites”. Scientists believe the end of the Cretinous period will happen when Americans will stop believing in endless growth on a finite planet.
 
Tsk.
 
That's from a review on a book I'm listening to
A nice audiobook
 
3:06 PM
Damn, you pushed me into a Wikipaedia chain spree.
When I looked up the size of the rock that killed the dinosaurs.
@Mitch I have forgotten her name. This famous Scandinavian schoolgirl who keeps telling politicians to take action and protect our climate.
 
Greta Thu-something?
 
Mar 7 '11 at 18:22, by Robusto
Who reads your shit?
 
Thunberg, a great girl I like very much
 
3:22 PM
Ah, yes, she.
 
3:53 PM
@Cerberus the rock was 40 meters across, obviously.
@Cerberus and now they've done just that, so thank fuck she'll finally shut the fuck up.
Still won't go to school tho. Too bad. Another uneducated girl growing up.
16 hours ago, by Robusto
Uneducated kids become uneducated adults.
 
@Cerberus It made a really big splash!
@CowperKettle Ohhh... -that- climate girl.
We are all climate girls.
2
Let that be my epitaph.
 
4:14 PM
India is declaring a 21 day nation wide lockdown.
> Though Wuhan has a population of 11 million residents, population estimates for the surrounding province placed the full lockdown at 60 million residents. This made China's action the largest quarantine in history.
They learned a lesson from that^
 
how to break a world record?
 
4:30 PM
Better to break that world record than the world record for COVID-19 deaths.
 
@Robusto well someone's gotta do it.
@Robusto ah sorry, I never read that...
 
The U.K. wised up @MattE.Эллен
 
4:57 PM
well, the government did. we'll see what the population do
 
@RegDwigнt That's part of the reason, yes.
 
5:09 PM
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in link text in answer, link at end of answer, potentially bad keyword in answer (142): "Place" or "venue"? by morgan on english.SE
 
13
Q: When did we start talking about "going viral"?

HTGI am trying to determine when the phrase "going viral" was first used. Similarly, when did the phrases "viral video" and "viral marketing" get their start? I have looked online at various sites, but none really address this question (other than saying "recently").

Pretty sure that one is dead now.
 
Severe Acute Respiratory-related Syndrome strikes again
 
Sarkozy fils, better known as Little Knicky.
 
5:44 PM
> forget freshman 15 i’m about to gain my covid 19
 
@RegDwigнt Oh, did you see it?
@RegDwigнt Hah.
@Mitch So it did!
 
5:57 PM
@Mitch sorry, just how large do you think we'll be making your gravestone?
You claim a new epitaph every other week.
Who's gonna chisel them all.
 
@RegDwigнt Replications
Duh
 
I'm just warning you someone might put "greedy dead fuck" on there and call it a day.
Which incidentally they can't for that is mine.
 
That wouldn't be nice
or responsible
 
Have you met people?
 
Is that a trick question?
 
6:00 PM
I can't do tricks.
 
You're no dog.
 
That could be part of the reason.
 
Haha sorry that was rude, but you set me up
 
I noticed no rudeness.
Maybe because I'm not just not a dog but also not a wallflower.
 
You're an unfeeling, cold automaton.
 
6:01 PM
Why are you saying that I am an unfeeling, cold automaton?
 
OMG
can you accidentally flag someone?
anyway...
 
Orchestral Manœuvres in the Grave?
 
back to plague puns...
 
da fox was here?
 
The fox didn't say anything.
 
6:03 PM
@RegDwigнt Eliza was the first chatbot. I knew Eliza. Eliza was a good friend of mine. You're no Eliza.
 
No I'm not. I have evolved.
 
3 hours ago, by Kit Z. Fox
Greta Thu-something?
 
You're no Mitsuku neither
 
@skullpatrol look up "Ylvis".
 
The Elvis of Valhalla?
 
6:05 PM
@Mitch I am John Anchovi.
 
@RegDwigнt I am John Bon Jovi.
 
Thank you for explaining my own wordplay to me. I learn so much.
Also his name is Jon.
 
You haven't met his brother
 
How would you know.
 
@RegDwigнt done
 
6:06 PM
Excellent.
 
Also his name is Buongiovi
 
Now give me one million dollars.
Since you're so good at executing orders.
 
@RegDwigнt You need to explain some more because I still don't get it.
 
Why do you say that you need to explain some more because I still don't get it?
 
That's exactly what I would expect you to say.
 
6:08 PM
The determinism is working.
 
Then your horoscope today was right.
 
The current Google doodle is of a baguette à la Vietnam.
Hope you were expecting that, too.
For I sure was not.
 
Bun me?
 
Ask Jeeves for "Altavista", then search for "google".
 
I don't see any doodle at all.
 
6:13 PM
I forgot Vietnamese sandwiches are no longer welcome in your country.
 
@RegDwigнt Well phok that.
 
Bang cock.
 
It works because pho is pronounced fuh.
 
Mine works because bang cock is pronounced bang cock.
 
Yours works because you "borrowed" it from EL&U.
24
Q: Explain this pickup line: "If Bangkok invaded Djibouti, would Greece help?"

User42I was at an Model UN conference and often notes like the following get passed. As I'm not a native speaker, I assume that this has to do with some pronunciational issue. Can you please explain what's so funny about this sentence? (Djibouti seemed to be often used in such context.) If Bangkok ...

Ah, those were simpler times.
You should start paying royalties for all them borrowings, mate.
And don't start giving me any post hoc ergo propter hoc folderol.
 
6:21 PM
I never borrowed anything from ELU.
I wrote all the text and then people starting copypasting it to ELU one sentence at a time.
Which is why it reads so rubbish so often.
I never hoped I would have to explain.
Tomorrow I'm planning a commando excursion to the office. Wish me luck.
Lol, the G7 have failed to issue a statement on corona because Trump insisted it must be renamed into "Wuhan virus".
Priorities!
 
Mar 12 '13 at 20:01, by tchrist
Of course he did.
 
Ah, 2013. Good times.
 
@RegDwigнt Never before has an Old-Testament-style retributory plague on one wayward demographic so coincided with Darwin's blade to winnow the collective gene pool of the stupid.
@RegDwigнt Recommend against going commando.
 
6:38 PM
If 40 000 people die each day of cardiovascular causes, what makes COVID-19 so bad?
 
6:50 PM
Jesus fuck what happened to @Cerberus's name on the main site.
It's grown a tumor.
1
Q: Is it CoViD? Or COVID? Covid? How should the word be spelled?

Cerberus_Reinstate_MonicaI have seen it spelled COVID-19, but I have also seen Covid-19. In addition, I believe I have seen CoViD-19, capitalising only the first letter of each word from which it was abbreviated (for it isn't an initialism). Which type of capitalisation is to be preferred, and which is acceptable?

@CowperKettle you're three months too late with that question.
@tchrist there's quite a few things I can't do from home. So I collect them over the course of one week, then deal with them all at once at the office.
A nice change of scenery.
Actually seeing the deserted streets and all.
 
@RegDwigнt If we just let the epidemic run its course, it will kill 40 million people. But if we take strict measures, it might kill more becaue the economy will collapse.
 
There's much less to do overall, but on the flip side some customers make sure to send us FYI emails informing us how they are required to remain operational by the government. Critical infrastructure. Power plants and communications. Defense and space.
 
40 million people is comparable to the numbers that die from cancer + cardiovascular disease combined
 
I did not say you were wrong. I said you were three months too late with that argument. There's a difference.
The argument has been considered.
 
I was attending news about Russian politics up intil about March 15th
I was not paying much attention to the virus
 
6:56 PM
Nah, there's no news about Russian politics. Hasn't been for a good decade or so.
On that note, let me go watch the evening news.
 
7:14 PM
@RegDwigнt Hehe.
You didn't like my question?
I wonder why it got a down-vote.
And I see it has two votes to close now? Why?
 
7:34 PM
@Cerberus I didn't comment on your question. I commented on your user name.
@Cerberus have you been on ELU before?
@CowperKettle anyway, back to that. You're talking about social immunity. Which is a very sensible approach in many cases, and a not-so-sensible one in many others. In the case of corona specifically, it has been both widely considered and even widely implemented, notably by the UK, who've held out the longest but are now backpedaling like madmen.
For one, the population starts complaining that they don't want to play guinea pigs for the government.
For two, your statistics start looking all skewed. Because you only test people who're already showing symptoms or even dying.
So there may well be 10 million infected in the US, and indeed 8 million of them may have recovered by now. But we never tested them, so we don't know. We're only counting the dead.
 
@CowperKettle "it's not part of the plan"
 
And so you get the situation where one country's mortality rate is somehow miraculously ten times higher than that of the country next door.
Like, the UK only has 8k cases to Germany's 33k. But there's 500 deaths in the UK vs only 100 in Germany. And that is all that people see and they start getting very cross.
And so the social immunity experiment bites the curb.
 
As long as Johnson and Trump look bad
 
They look bad regardless.
We don't need a pandemic for that.
 
They look more badder now.
Obviously, people voted them. They look bad to you, not to their voters
 
7:49 PM
As one final remark, population density plays a huge role. Like, even for the European part of Russia it's less than 30 people per square kilometre. And for the rest of the country, it might as well be zero.
 
@Mitch obviously the only reason I don't smoke.
 
But the population density in, say, Germany is almost ten times that of the European part of Russia. And that of the Netherlands is twice that of Germany. And that of the Holy See is four times that of the Netherlands.
So naturally, some approaches will work for some that won't work for others, and vice versa.
 
I dunno, everything seems so bloody complicated
 
As soon as there's a single person infected in the Vatican (which there is), there's your social immunity right there. Everyone is infected and you don't need to do anything.
 
I'd say inaction is dangerous, except everyone's acting, and over too
 
7:52 PM
I say buy more loo paper.
 
Amateurs
 
We've long burned the stores down
These TP musings are nothing to us
 
As I said, different approaches for different people.
Russia had its toilet-paper shortage in the 1980s so it's immune to that by now.
 
Now, there's probably even a shortage for fruit and vegetables that are rich in vitamin C, so I've heard
But
People don't wash their bloody hands, and socialize like they've seen half of their relatives for the first time in their lives
 
7:55 PM
Well of course there is. Because it takes a really smart person to know that "rich in vitamin C" is not worth buying because your body cannot stockpile it. Anything that it doesn't use, it disposes of immediately.
 
So there's two things people shouldn't be doing, and they do them, and instead do a dozen things that wouldn't make a difference
 
@M.A.R. With no toilet paper, there's no but
 
@Mitch Which is why cinemas are struggling to get buts in the seats. They should be selling loo rolls and not popcorn buckets.
 
@RegDwigнt even if it could, the immune system is not a lvl. 1 wizard's wisdom skills in an RPG game to be upgraded immediately
@Mitch that's not how my but works but OK
 
Well mine is level 9001 and I have a Gameshark, so wevs.
 
7:58 PM
We don't even use TP much, except to dry our hands
 
washes hands some more
 
How common are bidets there?
 
About this common.
 
@M.A.R. pretty rare, or as @RegDwigнt points out, why are these new-fangled sock washers so low to the ground?
 
9:05 PM
 
@Robusto had to look up Bill Mitchell.
Now I wish I hadn't.
553k followers.
> Shows how quickly this market can recover once America gets back to work. God bless America. God bless President Trump.
Hm. Then again I would have to keep tweeting things like that to get that number. Hm. Choices, choices. Hm, hm.
 
9:44 PM
I noticed there's something wrong with his nose, but never mind.
 
 
1 hour later…
10:55 PM
@CowperKettle Not all countries have 40 million people to spare.
 
@Gigili I noticed the optical illusion that the screens are at different angles (but they're not).
@tchrist another analogy: the total amount of water that comes up on a shore in a day is X. So why bother about a tidal wave which is much less total.
 

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