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12:54 AM
@JohanLarsson My club's website? Yes, I did the whole thing.
 
1:09 AM
link?
 
@JohanLarsson I'll send you a link to your email if you want to post it. I don't want to broadcast it in chat.
 
deadlock then
no biggie, was just curious
 
Sure. No problem.
The best things about the site are in the members-only section anyway.
All the ride stats and so forth.
And there's the ride submission and editing tools, etc.
 
are the riders happy with it?
 
1:33 AM
Yeah. The smarter ones. Some of the old people who aren't too computer-literate have some trouble. The old webmaster just took phone calls and personally hand-coded every new ride list, butler style, but my site makes you actually fill out web forms and choose routes from lists and so on.
But his site was shite. I volunteered to redo the site and the power that be jumped at the chance.
 
2:29 AM
@Robusto Very nice.
I haven't time to listen to it all now.
So far, the oldest accent seems easier to understand than the second oldest.
It also seems to resemble Scandinavian a bit more than does modern English (and of course also Dutch).
 
@Cerberus It's interesting for differences like pronouncing the first k in knock and, later, pronouncing the numeral "one" as we would pronounce "own" and so on.
 
 
2 hours later…
4:07 AM
Word of the day: trochanter (Humans are known to have three trochanters, though the anatomic "normal" includes only the greater and lesser trochanters.)
 
 
3 hours later…
7:16 AM
Macropinna microstoma is the only species of fish in the genus Macropinna, belonging to the Opisthoproctidae, the barreleye family. It is recognized for a highly unusual transparent, fluid-filled dome on its head, through which the lenses of its eyes can be seen. The eyes have a barrel shape and can be rotated to point either forward or straight up, looking through the fish's transparent dome. M. microstoma has a tiny mouth and most of its body is covered with large scales. The fish normally hangs nearly motionless in the water, at a depth of about 600 metres (2,000 ft) to 800 metres (2,600 ft...
Transparent-head fish
 
7:28 AM
Word of the midday: ö (island in Swedish)
 
 
3 hours later…
10:10 AM
Israel will have vaccinated every 10th citizen by the start of 2021. Impressive.
 
10:31 AM
This seems like a good article, if anyone cares - counterpunch.org/2020/12/22/…
Accurate, as far as I can tell. I'm not an expert on the topic, of course.
I just talked to someone in a local stationery shop about local shortages. He says the roads out of Delhi are blocked by the protest.
Apparently Delhi printing presses ship to Bombay.
 
11:15 AM
Russians have donated a total of 150 000 000 Rubles (USD 2 million) to buy a single injection of Zolgensma for 5-month old Misha Bakhtin. novayagazeta.ru/news/2020/12/31/…
He needs this injection to stay alive.
Onasemnogene abeparvovec, sold under the brand name Zolgensma, is a gene therapy medication used to treat spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). It was approved for children less than two years old in 2019. It is used as a one-time injection into a vein with at least two months of corticosteroids.Common side effects include vomiting and increased liver enzymes. Onasemnogene abeparvovec works by providing a new copy of the gene that makes the human SMN protein.Onasemnogene abeparvovec was approved for medical use in the United States in 2019, and in Japan and the European Union in 2020. == Medical uses... ==
The most expensive drug in the world
I donated 50 rubles, less than a dollar.
 
11:57 AM
@CowperKettle This sounds like science fiction.
I guess I haven't been keeping up.
 
@CowperKettle Wow wow
Such malancholy too
 
They opened the 234th station in the Moscow Subway, and now it is 409 km long.
But it's only the 6th long in the world, with the first four being in China.
They managed to build longer subway systems in just 30 years, while in Moscow the subway has been under construction since 1933.
Mayakovskaya Station
Old stations are beautiful
I wonder if they make beautiful subway stations in China too.
This one is great, in Uzbekistan's capital Tashkent
 
1:13 PM
 
red line :)
 
 
1 hour later…
2:25 PM
Happy New Year!
4
 
@M.A.R. Thank you-
Same to you and your peeps.
 
2:48 PM
 
> The weird, titanic, gnarled, joyous, grief-stricken monster that is the Hammerklavier.
That about sums it up.
 
I try to abstain from alcohol. I've been quietly pouring drinks on the ground during hiking trips, when everybody drank.
I try to drink a single glass of wine and stop at that.
 
3:06 PM
I prefer hangover over being drunk
 
My uncle was an alcoholic. Once he was in a very severe condition of non-stop drinking.
He once drank a huge portion of herbal root extract that stood in our kitchen. A kind of extract that you should drink by spoonful in order not to overload yourself with herbal stuff.
He could not restrain himself if there was alcohol available.
Towards the end of his life he had several non-alcoholic years.
 
What are average drinking habits in russia?
 
@JohanLarsson I don't know, but I think that in the recent decade people became healthier.
The problem is, the people I know are hikers, bicyclers, runners.
They do not drink much.
 
was a meaningless question
 
There must be some statistics about this.
There were good laws passed in about 2010 that made it hard to buy liquor
Sadly, some of them there later loosened up, and it again became easier.
Some chart I found online says that Russians have decreased their drinking.
 
3:19 PM
:)
 
Since 2003 till 2016, consumption of alcohol declined by 43% forbes.ru/newsroom/obshchestvo/…
 
@CowperKettle In Russia? What happened after 2016?
 
@FaheemMitha I dunno
 
I hear Russians like to drink, though I don't know why.
Perhaps it's the cold?
 
An average Russian drinks 11.1 liters/year gazeta.ru/business/2019/11/11/12806438.shtml
I also don't know why ))
Moscow-Petushki, also published as Moscow to the End of the Line, Moscow Stations, and Moscow Circles, is a pseudo-autobiographical postmodernist prose poem by Russian writer and satirist Venedikt Yerofeyev. Written between 1969 and 1970 and passed around in samizdat, it was first published in 1973 in Israel and later, in 1977, in Paris. It was published in the Soviet Union only in 1989, during the perestroika era of Soviet history, in the literary almanac Vest' (Весть) and in the magazine Abstinence and Culture (Трезвость и Культура, Trezvost i Kultura) in a slightly abridged form. The story...
> The story follows an alcoholic intellectual, Venya (or Venichka), as he travels by a suburban train on a 125 km (78 mi) journey from Moscow along the Gorkovsky suburban railway line to visit his beautiful beloved and his child in Petushki, a town that is described by the narrator in almost utopian terms.
> At the start of the story, he has just been fired from his job as foreman of a telephone cable-laying crew for drawing charts of the amount of alcohol he and his colleagues were consuming over time. These graphs showed a clear correlation with personal characters.
> While on the train, he engages in lengthy monologues about history, philosophy and politics. He also befriends many of his fellow travellers and discusses life in the Soviet Union with them over multiple bottles of alcohol.
 
3:24 PM
@tchrist is there a way to see how definition of intellectual have changed over time in OED?
 
It's a good story. I read it as a child and found the descriptions of Venichka's jugaad cocktails hilarious.
 
3:35 PM
@CowperKettle When I was working and had small children I would have a couple of beers each night. But when I again got the time to exercise regularly I stopped drinking except on social occasions. Now I don't even do that, partly because there are no social occasions (or the ones there are involve cycling), and partly because if I have a drink after a ride it ruins my "exercise high."
 
@CowperKettle That doesn't sound like much.
I had two beers around the time my mother died. December 2018. The time I'd had alcohol before had been 2011, I think. They tasted quite good, so I got a bit worried.
That's also the last time I had alcohol. I guess I might have some around 2025.
I don't really get the attraction/obsession with alcohol.
 
For some people, drinking alcohol is the only time they feel good, or their life seems manageable.
Read James Joyce's story "Counterparts" in Dubliners.
 
I realise that life sucks in general. But I usually just opt for feeling miserable. I've never been a fan of intoxicants.
I remember having panic attacks in 2002. I was hyperventilating. That was fun.
 
Fun?
 
That's the first and only time I've experienced that, though I'd read about it before.
@Robusto Well, it was interesting.
 
3:46 PM
I remember having a conversation with my piano tuner, an ex-alcoholic. I mentioned that I had been feeling pretty good that morning, but then had a beer at lunch and now I felt crummy. He said, "Clearly you're not an alcoholic. When I was drinking I would have said just the opposite."
 
I've never really liked the taste of beer.
Though I can see why it might appeal to people.
@Robusto Have you ever watched the sitcom "Mom"?
 
No.
 
Last year, I was meeting New Year in Moscow, and the next day I ran two ParkRuns, at 08:00 and at 09:00
It's a pity that they stopped ParkRuns due to the pandemic.
Parkrun (stylised as parkrun) is a collection of 5-kilometre (3.1 mi) events for walkers, runners and volunteers that take place every Saturday morning at more than 2,000 locations in 22 countries across five continents. Junior Parkrun (stylised as junior parkrun) is a spin-off event that provides a 2 kilometres (1 1⁄4 mi) event for children aged 4–14 and their families weekly on a Sunday morning. Parkrun events are free to enter and are delivered by volunteers, supported by a small group of staff at its headquarters. Parkrun was founded by Paul Sinton-Hewitt on 2 October 2004 at Bushy Park in...
Did you have parkruns in your cities?
We had a single ParkRun in Yekaterinburg, that there were about a dozen in Moscow.
A dozen locations.
This guy is blind, the one with the beard
And he also ran a ParkRun in Moscow on 1 Jan 2020
Along with this young guy who directed him
And this was the second ParkRun on Jan 1st, at the Olympic Village of Moscow
Some people ran with baby carriages.
 
4:28 PM
@JohanLarsson Yes.
 
user489849
Hi, I recently edited a question (english.stackexchange.com/questions/556223/…) but didn't notice a typo in the title: "a" should be "an" in this context. If anyone with edit privileges deems it suitable, do edit the title.
 
Done!
 
user489849
@CowperKettle Thanks. Happy New Year!
 
4:50 PM
@niamulbengali Happy New 2021!
Cheers to Bangladesh!
 
user489849
5:07 PM
@CowperKettle Peace and prosperity to Russia as well.
 
5:24 PM
@Robusto No, I don't understand it like you do. I'm sure you have a better understanding of it.
'but for' is really vague for me. I'm not expecting it and I breeze through just getting the 'but' part. And I don't understand the context of where the author is coming from, what the stance is, complaining about obscurantism or fashion or trying to use fancy words or what and they're all sort of similar but still distinct. It might have helped if I had more of the preceding text, but probably not.
 
5:59 PM
I'm looking for a superlative of 'common practice' that is not yet 'always' but very close to it. Any ideas? 'Common practice among managers is to use X.'
 
@CowperKettle Books don't change the world; it's people who change the world. Books change people.
@Řídící Well, the superlative of common is commonest or most common.
Practice doesn't have a superlative because it's substantive not a modifier.
Widespread?
 
Widespread comes closer, but is still not quite it. Something with 'norm' would be OK, but in this case the practice itself is bad, so norm is a bit weird.
0
Q: 'Norm' or 'standard' but in a negative sense

ŘídícíI'm looking to replace the word 'norm' in The norm among managers is to use technique X because technique X is actually bad, and 'norm' suggests a positive value judgment to me. Same with standard. I tag with 'single-word-requests', but a couple would be fine too.

 
@Řídící Thanks.
 
6:17 PM
I thought that list would rile you @Cerberus
> The IT department at U of Michigan has released a list of inclusive terms, to replace problematic ones.

For example, rather than the harmful term "picnic," it recommends "gathering." And why engage in violent word violence like "brown bag," when you can use "lunch and learn"?
Some of them seem reasonable alternatives. Others (picnic? brown bag? privilege?) seem crazy.
 
how is long time, no see bad?
 
I think I understand (but don't agree with) that one...
"long time no see" is a word for word translation of a typical Mandarin greeting "hao jiu bu jian"
 
tricky stuff, couple of surprising entries
 
but as most English people don't know (or care) about that, the phrasing of "long time no see" sounds like badly formed English.
The reason it may be considered to be avoided is because people may perceive it to be making fun of foreigners' fractured rendering in English.
@Řídící nice. I never even knew of the possible (but discredited) lynching connection.
 
6:25 PM
@Mitch Me neither. But internet.
 
It's like you can make something up on the internet and people will just accept it as true
here's one "In 2016, an escapee from a clown-car, in a fright wig and covered in orange grease paint, became loved and admired by enough of the population, to become ruler of a nuclear power"
No one rational would believe that, but just wait and it'll become part of history books.
 
But I think it makes sense to consider terms that have been adopted by hate groups or even just memes and stuff as being problematic, notwithstanding their origin or normal lack of connotation. It also has to do with the limited vocabulary prevalent in such groups. Then again a picnic and a gathering are two different things, aren't they?
No sane person would use the term 'fake news', for example.
 
> Time to forget this horrible year
It's 20 minutes till 2021 in Yekaterinburg.
@Mitch That's odd. I wonder why "honey" and "sweetie" might be bad.
 
6:42 PM
@Řídící "Lügenpresse" has a history
 
@Mitch Brown bag? That's ridiculous.
@Řídící And that's a pretty slippery slope
 
@CowperKettle Perhaps because, on the internet, 'honey' and 'sweetie' almost always mean: 'listen dipshit'.
 
@CowperKettle As terms of endearment, they might be considered putting someone in a lower place (like calling someone 'boy') or as sexual innuendo. (if used by a man towards a woman who he works with)
 
No don't do that honey! -> I'm two minutes away from giving you back to the animal shelter
 
@CowperKettle I get those, unwelcome attention
 
6:45 PM
@Mitch Ah!
 
But... pretty much no dude would use those words (for anybody) (at least in my experience), Also, those are pretty prevalent in the South.
@Řídící THere's also that.
an ironic usage
 
@JohanLarsson Not even that. It has sorta a "you're too pretty to worry about these things" vibe to it
 
@M.A.R. I mean if it's a cat you're talking about, I think that'd be OK.
 
Attacking someone's position by calling them soft
So it's not endearment
Unless it's an honest mistake
 
@M.A.R. well, yes it is, but the implications are more.
 
6:47 PM
@Mitch or if the sweetheart works in the animal shelter
 
Sort of like the recent kefuffle over the NYT oped directed at Jill Biden's use of 'Dr.' . Among many things problematic about the article was he started it out saying 'kiddo'... another hypocorism which while intended to be making things informal, turned out to be belittling, especially in a NYT article saying that a doctorate degree shouldn';t get you the title of 'Dr' (or something like that).
@M.A.R. Touché
 
@Mitch link to cowfefe?
Oh snap, so that's what Trump meant
Not "coverage". That's stupid.
 
@M.A.R. hold on ... (my memory is much faster than clicking around to find the stuff)
 
@Mitch show off
 
6:54 PM
Yekaterinburg city hall
With the New Year tree
 
> By Joseph Epstein
Dec. 11, 2020 5:56 pm ET
Madame First Lady—Mrs. Biden—Jill—kiddo: a bit of advice on what may seem like a small but I think is a not unimportant matter. Any chance you might drop the “Dr.” before your name? “Dr. Jill Biden” sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic. Your degree is, I believe, an Ed.D., a doctor of education, earned at the University of Delaware through a dissertation with the unpromising title “Student Retention at the Community College Level: Meeting Students’ Needs.” A wise man once said that no one should call himself “Dr.” unless he has d
Also, it's a 'kerfuffle'. Not 'kefuffle'. Or (as I'd prefer) 'kerfluffle' (for obvs reasons).
Also 'brouhaha'
 
Brohaha
 
haha
bro
dustup
melee
donnybrook
runnymede
roughshod
keelhauled
 
@Mitch Is that the Jupiter moon?
 
fourflusher
@M.A.R. as much as it is also a small village in southern England where the Magna Carta was signed, yes.
Ganymede was the 'cupbearer' to Zeus. Or was it Jupiter? Those guys really mixed things up.
 
7:00 PM
It's cupbearers all the way down
 
@Mitch Wow what is this guy's deal?
 
@M.A.R. That doesn't sound like a good job. I think bearing cups was the least of their duties
 
@Mitch Jupiter mostly shields us from extrasolar (is that a word?) asteroids
Important job for a cupbearer
But doesn't pay taxes
 
@M.A.R. I'm rereading it... the guy is a dick. Most of the things he says in there are... kinda the situation, but the way he says it, he's just saying it publicly to assuage his own ego.
@M.A.R. also Jupiter helps marshall the asteroid belt, avoiding the interior planets.
there's a great gif of this on twitter, but somehow I can't figure out how to get animated gifs from there to here.
 
7:06 PM
Isn't it hypothesized that Jupiter and Saturn blew a planet up there long ago?
It's their own fault
@Mitch it won't show up for me anyway
 
@M.A.R. animated gifs won't show, twitter won't show, or any gifs at all won't show?
 
@Mitch Twitter won't show
 
7:29 PM
@Mitch I didn't reread, but I think that the guy has an honorary doctorate. Obviously, you can't use that. So, he seemed upset that somebody with an actual doctorate was allowed to use it. He seemed to have missed that the reason that his doctorate doesn't allow to put Dr in front of your name is that it was honorary, not that it was non-medical. Something like that.
'With regard to the use of this honorific, the policies of institutions of higher education generally ask that recipients "refrain from adopting the misleading title" and that a recipient of an honorary doctorate should restrict the use of the title "Dr" before their name to any engagement with the institution of higher education in question and not within the broader community.'
Maybe I misremembered.
 
8:02 PM
@Mitch The treadmill of euphemism turns and turns.
What can we do but ignore it?
Religious sects always have their own, elaborate vocabularies, correct words, and taboo words.
@CowperKettle Happy New Year!!
 
@Cerberus crippled and handicapped are on there which seems almost anachronistic
 
Isn't it all?
 
@Cerberus tabernac!
@Cerberus I meant in the sense that no one has used 'crippled' in the sense of 'can't use legs well' for a long time
because taboo/mean like that.
but they do use it for 'technical system that has been artificially limited'
but it still has a slight taboo feeling to it.
as to normalizing taboo feelings into proscriptions, sometimes there's no treadmill.
there's no need to say 'off the reservation'. that's a gratuitous metaphor.
'sold down the river' also. but 'thrown under the bus' is a bit graphic and has other connotations.
 
8:28 PM
There are some sports with handicaps (golf, sailing). What are they supposed to use instead?
 
functional variations
 
9:15 PM
'an upwards revision of the year-end private equity valuations'. I the s in 'upwards' correct? BrE
 
10:00 PM
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected, toxic answer detected (158): Word that describes someone that causes his own misfortune ✏️ by michael on english.SE
 
Uhhhh, Smokey, you just flagged an answer from seven years ago. Really?
And for the record, it's a correct, if not site-specifically-correct, answer.
Happy New Year to all whose time zones have fallen into the new year.
 
10:24 PM
@Řídící yes
without the 's' is equivalently ok
 
10:39 PM
@Mitch Thanks
 
> Whether the Republican Party can be salvaged is very much an open question. I don’t know the answer. But here is what I do know: Patriotic Republicans and conservatives need to fight for the soul of the Republican Party, for its sake and for the sake of the nation.
Yeah. And then try panning for gold in the Potomac. Your odds of success are just as good.
 
11:00 PM
happy new year
 
11:25 PM
> What's McConnell's favorite movie? Kill Bill.
@Robusto it got a new answer today, so Smokey scanned the whole thing again. Very rarely, very old spam has ended up undetected.
 

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