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12:00 AM
@Cerberus ah... the sounds of the sea
@user178758 also fiction.
 
I've been attacked by a crow!
 
classic
 
I came across that film when I was alone in a room in someone else's house, it was night.
And I had no idea what I was watching, the film had already began when I chanced to the channel.
So it was pretty scary!
 
Ravens are so aggressive they named the Baltimore football team after them
 
12:08 AM
skullpatrol?
 
yup
 
haha
you goofball
you must have been taunting that crow
 
I think I was around its nest
 
@Cerberus no sense of manners
 
Alas, no.
 
12:12 AM
I had to hide under a tree, because it kept swooping down on me.
 
@user178758 Be thankful it wasn't a bear and you were wandering aimlessly near her cubs
also be thankful that bears can't fly
for so many reasons
bears are totally cool... unless you're near them
 
Yeah, robusto's bear story is scary!
 
there's a bear story? I'm guessing it turned out in the end OK for @robusto. maybe not for the bear?
 
I guess you could call a sea gull a sea hawk...
 
@Mitch Why are you @mentioning me?
 
12:17 AM
Speak of the devil
 
::runs::
 
@Robusto because @user178758 mentioned you about a bear
exit, pursued by a bear
 
I just noticed, you have > 127,000 posts in chat.
I have > 130,000.
 
@Robusto dude you're slowing down
 
Keerist. We've probably written as much text as in one of the LoTR books.
 
12:19 AM
we've also probably created as many artificial languages
 
@user178758 You could also call him Fred. Or Edwina. Or Kerberos.
 
true
 
Remember, the original @Cerberus was placed at the entry to Hades to keep the living out. So far he's succeeded in ELU chat, in that he's kept out anyone who has a life.
 
Uhh.
 
Useless fact: 4/5 of the birds in the NFL are in the NFC
 
12:24 AM
I should consult my contract, but I think my main task is to keep the dead in.
 
@Cerberus Read the fine print.
Either way, it's working.
 
Do they have Covid in Hades?
 
> dog that guards the gates of the Underworld to prevent the dead from leaving
3
In Greek mythology, Cerberus (; Greek: Κέρβερος Kérberos [ˈkerberos]), often referred to as the hound of Hades (Greek: Κυνα του Αιδου Kuna tou Aidou), is a multi-headed dog that guards the gates of the Underworld to prevent the dead from leaving. He was the offspring of the monsters Echidna and Typhon, and was usually described as having three heads, a serpent for a tail, and snakes protruding from multiple parts of his body. Cerberus is primarily known for his capture by Heracles, one of Heracles' twelve labours. == Descriptions == Descriptions of Cerberus vary, including the number of his heads...
Hmm.
 
Hmm, where did I hear about keeping the living out?
2
Game, set, and match.
> Later images gave the dog qualities of a lion as well. He had great claws, a shaggy mane, or a more lion-like face in later Greek and Roman images.
Our doggy is not quite so terrifying.
 
Grr.
 
12:31 AM
Cute
Who's a good boy? You are.
Such a good boy.
 
Yeah, but he was bested by Herakles. Bite and scratch though he might.
 
17 mins ago, by Mitch
Speak of the devil
 
Grrrrrr.
 
They're Grrrrr eat!
 
1
Q: What's the synonym of "Module"?

VegaI want to know the synonym of the word "module" in the context of university. What is another way to call a module of a university course? can I call it a subject ?

Seriously?
0
A: What's the synonym of "Module"?

soysoymilkI don't think you can call it a subject, but perhaps a "unit".

And it deserves just such an answer.
 
12:43 AM
Have they not heard of a section?
 
0
A: What's the synonym of "Module"?

Cerberus_Reinstate_MonicaI believe the word course is frequently used for a module one completes at university, such as "Greek Linguistics I".

How about this?
 
That works.
 
Thanks.
 
@Cerberus I upvoted you just so soymilk wouldn't take the prize.
> The Black Dog – In English folklore, the Black Dog is a specter associated with death and misfortune. It is often described as either a ghost or a hellhound. The Barghest, Church Grim, and Gwyllgi are all variations on the Black Dog specific to different regions of the British Isles.
 
Jul 10 '17 at 14:44, by Robusto
Getting back to bear attacks:

Back in my youth I went on a lengthy hike in Jasper National Park in Canada. The ranger who set us up gave us the warning about bears. He handed us cans of pepper spray and little bells to put on our packs, which would alert bears in the area to our presence.
He also told us we needed to be alert to bear sign.
What's bear sign? we asked
Mostly be aware of bear scat in the area. Meaning bear shit.
You have to be able to tell the difference between black bear scat and grizzly bear scat.
IIRC, there is a story about him actually being chased by one
 
1:03 AM
@user178758 No, not chased. If I'd been chased I wouldn't be here now.
 
true
 
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.
3
He didn't see me, but he stood up and huffed the air like he smelled my scent.
Did you ever try to not emanate a scent? I tried that day.
Anyway, he walked off into the woods on the other side of the road, and for a moment I was relieved. Then I thought: now I don't know where he is.
 
Just like the jungle drums...
 
@Robusto What a compliment.
 
Inorite.
 
1:23 AM
here is the original @Mitch
from the good o' days
 
@user178758 nice
bears
they will mess you up
They're just scared like we are
but they're bigger and have claws
 
yup, da bears of Chicago had the greatest defence ever
 
There are those vids of former trainers visiting lions from years past, and them acting like big ol kittens
barefoot
 
nice
 
all that cat had to do was...
a little swipe here...
 
1:36 AM
@user178758 You think a lineman looks big? Sometime you should see a grizzly up close.
 
and then jump on the guy filming...
it's all over
freedom
 
Grizzly bears are the very definition of not-to-be-fucked-with.
 
after a big meal
 
They're like in the way
 
 
1 hour later…
3:04 AM
(In the USA)
 
I think that percentage will be quite a bit higher here.
Many people never marry.
And most women have their first child after 30, I think.
Ah, yes, it is slightly above 30.
But many women will have their first child some years after marriage, so it's hard to compare and combine such info.
 
Rivers in the Urals are 20% below their usual levels for June, due to extremely hot spring e1.ru/text/summer/2021/06/08/69957317
 
Hmm.
That's not good.
We have had a cold spring.
Which then suddenly turned into warm summer weather in late May.
It went from 13 to 24 degrees in a few days.
 
3:22 AM
But close to 40% of births in the U S and much of Europe are to unmarried women.
Wedlock. A word seldom used except in “out of wedlock.”
Die Frau oder die Ehefrau.
Die eheliche Frau.
 
3:40 AM
Yes, exactly.
 
4:26 AM
Increased parental age is associated with increased risk of mental disorders in the offspring, for both mothers and fathers.
 
 
1 hour later…
5:37 AM
I tried to sue the airline for losing my luggage. I lost my case.
 
6:33 AM
@CowperKettle wow
 
7:56 AM
I'm overweight
I should drop 5 kg
 
8:50 AM
make sure your foot is out of the way when you do! don't want to break a toe.
 
9:32 AM
I'll be careful
 
 
1 hour later…
11:01 AM
In Kazakhstan a truck driver failed to notice a car and destroyed it. The truck is without a scratch of course
 
11:59 AM
@Cerberus 100% of bachelors and spinsters are unmarried
 
12:51 PM
Opposition activist Andrey Pivovarov faces up to 6 years in prison for making a post in Facebook calling people on to support independents in the upcoming elections.
 
1:07 PM
Young woman in Yeketerinburg set fluff on fire, and her guy took her by hand and led her away. The fire burned a car. Luckily, the nearby cars were saved, and firefighters saved the nearby wooden house. znak.com/2021-06-08/…
I bet the police will find them and they will have to pay for the car at least. A lot of money.
It's their luck that not all three cars burned down, but only one.
 
@tchrist ^
It's starting. Fires in Arizona are dumping their smoke here.
Yesterday was hazy, but today I can't even see the mountain from my front yard.
 
Same here. I can see no mountains at all.
 
1:25 PM
Marijuana might be dangerous. I would use some component of it instead, like cannabidiol, purified.
Cannabidiol (CBD) is a phytocannabinoid discovered in 1940. It is one of 113 identified cannabinoids in cannabis plants, along with tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), and accounts for up to 40% of the plant's extract. As of 2019, clinical research on CBD included studies related to anxiety, cognition, movement disorders, and pain, but there is insufficient high-quality evidence that cannabidiol is effective for these conditions.Cannabidiol can be taken internally in multiple ways, including by inhaling cannabis smoke or vapor, by mouth, and as an aerosol spray into the cheek. It may be supplied as CBD...
> Blessed is he who aye avoids
That cursed lot, cannabinoids;
Except for cannabidiol,
Which slightly differs from them all.
Although the jury is still out on cannabidiol's effects. It may turn out not very good too.
It takes a lot of time to research.
 
@CowperKettle I researched marijuana assiduously for about four years in my late teens and early 20s. The dangers, if any, were much less than getting my ass shot off in Vietnam would have been.
 
Another fire. I don't recall so many fires
A lot of fluff slowly drifts through the air even at my window level, which is high
@Robusto I read that the content of psychoactive substances have been increasing in the weed. Maybe decades ago it was safer. But surely it was better than dying in Vietnam
I never had the urge to smoke it.
 
@CowperKettle It was a phase I went through. Finally I realized that I had learned all I needed to from it and other psychedelics.
 
I would have liked to try LSD, because it's non-addictive
 
I've smoked it very occasionally over the decades since then and gathered nothing new from it.
 
1:39 PM
Maybe once.
I don't know whether it's possible to obtain LSD in Russia
 
@CowperKettle LSD changed my life.
It seriously opened my eyes to very many things.
 
Hmm.. without it, they would not have opened?
 
You're right about marijuana being stronger now than it was back in my day, but only on average. There was some very, very powerful stuff back then as well. But the run of the mill was not like the run of the mill today.
@CowperKettle I don't know, but I can tell you I had some very powerful epiphanies during acid trips.
 
One of Joseph Stalin's grandsons became a drug addict and died in early 1970s. I guess he tried everything.
 
The last trip I took was very strong, and it led me to understand what art and music were all about. I'm not kidding. I suddenly understood at a very deep level what they were and why people created them.
Before that they were just games people played. That's what I thought in high school, anyway.
 
1:47 PM
I never wondered "why" people create art and music. I thought they do it because it's pleasurable
 
@CowperKettle You can't understand them unless you know the "why" of their creation.
Pleasure is only one component. If pleasure were all there is, it would be something else.
 
@CowperKettle It's the smoking part that is bad for you.
 
There must be some evolutionary advantage to creating art. It shows that your brain is creative, and this attracts a spouse. It shows that you can spare time and effort on something not related to food only. This attracts a spouse - it signals your fitness.
 
THC and CBD (the 'fun' components of marijuana) aren't addictive and their short term effects are way less dangerous than alcohol.
dangerous for the user or for others.
 
@CowperKettle I can see you don't really understand art the way I do. I believe it's beyond just attracting a mate, though it can be used for that.
Take some LSD and we'll talk.
2
 
1:51 PM
nicotine (from tobacco) is addictive but it's short term effects are practically invisible to others. (but I suppose long term can mess with the user, but I don't think as bad as alcohol).
 
Russia has recently passed a law under which the phrase "take some LSD" can land you in jail. Propaganda of prohibited substances has been criminalized.
One musician has already been called for questioning recently.
 
you probably shouldn't operate a car or other heavy machinery while using psychoactives (like THC or LSD), and long term use of them is probably not the best for the user, but they don't eat away at all your inner organs like alcohol does, or fill your lungs with pus like smoking anything does).
 
@CowperKettle That right there ought to tell you that LSD is a good thing.
 
It's technically not a drug because it does not cause the dopamine habituation reaction (in which subsequent exposures cause a higher burst of dopamine, even years after staying off the stimulus)
 
Governments don't want their citizens' minds expanded. They don't want anyone to suddenly see the horrible ridiculousness of war and poverty and all that stuff.
 
1:55 PM
I feel like CBD is mostly a scam or rather does as much as herbal tea.
@CowperKettle what substances -do- cause that?
 
@Mitch Tobacco
 
LSD is a door you go through, and once on the other side you don't need to go through that door again.
 
Tobacco is very hard to get off.
 
I've read that tobacco is more addictive than heroin, and harder to kick.
 
As Mark Twain probably never said many times, it's easy to quit smoking - I've done it hundreds of times.
 
1:57 PM
@Mitch There is a lot of interesting research into different herbs.
Such as Aswhagandha. Which was banned in Russia recently, sadly.
 
@Robusto I don't think Trainspotting was about stopping smoking cigarettes.
 
And, for instance, saffron crocus might be an effective antidepressant. Although the studies are very small, so it's always not completely certain. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6266642
 
@Mitch That is irrelevant.
 
@CowperKettle Sure, the entire base of pharmaceutical knowledge started with herbal remedies. But anything that is sold as herbal tea nowadays pretty much just lightly colors your water.
 
Those teas should all just be labeled PLACEBO.
If you have to wonder if a drug is working, it's not a drug.
 
2:15 PM
This mentions something I've long wondered about. Do academics in science who have to publish, including PhD candidates, get as much interest in their work if their experiments prove their hypotheses wrong?
But isn't proving a hypothesis wrong as valuable as proving it right?
 
2:32 PM
depends on your agenda
If your agenda is "I want to keep the money I've been given to prove three in one vaccines cause autism"
@Robusto but in short, no, and not for corrupt reason, just for human reason. people often aren't interested in work that proves the null hypothesis
 
@Robusto I'll watch it later.
I've read that this is a problem in science. The tendency to push awkward study results under the carpet. And not to publish them.
 
2:48 PM
@Robusto Our AQI is 59 here. You have the worst air in the country right now per fire.airnow.gov
 
4:07 PM
 
4:39 PM
@tchrist Oh, dear, have the fires returned?
@Robusto A big NO! That is a large part of the problem.
@CowperKettle Bybon is really cool. He could lift two of you.
@MattE.Эллен Wow, you're so knowledgeable!
Meanwhile:
A decade later, I think I now see the error of my ways. I still prefer often where possible, but I think much of the time can be fine as well. — Cerberus_Reinstate_Monica 3 mins ago
 
@Cerberus Please no fat-shaming in chat
 
@CowperKettle Is 150 pounds really fat?
 
@CowperKettle On the contrary, I'm demonstrating how light you are, if another man could lift twice your weight, 2500 years ago.
 
4:59 PM
@M.A.R. BMI calculators say so
 
@Robusto It should be emphasised that this problem is most prominent in social psychology.
 
Who am I to doubt a BMI calculator
 
I think that sub-field has several important problems.
 
My heart rate drops to 38 when I just sit and read
But here it's 40, due to the strain of making a photo
 
Hmm that's low, isn't it?
Perhaps because you are such a well trained runner?
 
5:03 PM
Yes, it's due to running ))
 
Then it is good?
 
I think yes )) I like showing it off ))
I have runner friends who run much, much more than me. I wonder what their heart rates are
 
@Cerberus thanks. Such statistical knowledge is hard to come by
 
You must have a great network of informants.
 
I have Stacks of them and we Exchange so much information
 
5:13 PM
When I read healthcare news, every day it's "a new AI tool this", "a new AI tool that". It looks like they have started applying Artificial Intelligence to just everything. I wonder how many AI specialists are there. It must take years to learn AI, mustn't it.
 
5:36 PM
@MattE.Эллен Yeah. Sadly, that's kind of what I expected.
@tchrist: It's terrible.
Compare today:
with last week:
 
@CowperKettle It is a buzz word.
I wouldn't expect it to entail that much in those contexts.
 
@Cerberus That's also not surprising, as social psychology is less rigorous, shall we say, than other sciences.
My scientist son has undergraduate degrees in biology and psychology (he was originally interested in neuroscience) and he has nothing but disdain for psychology.
"Not a hard science," he says.
 
6:02 PM
@CowperKettle I think you are quite more sophisticated than a simple formula.
@Robusto prevalent attitude among most medical professionals, at least.
There's some disdain towards pharmacists too, though of course never as much, it's a pretty research-heavy field
 
@M.A.R. The thing is, psychology is still in its infancy compared with the other sciences. They all went through their sketchy periods. Geocentric cosmology, spontaneous generation, miasma theory of contagion, etc.
Maybe psych will grow up. Maybe not. Time will tell.
@CowperKettle That's really low. Mine doesn't fall into the 40s unless I'm sleeping.
 
@Robusto Like a scene in a cowboy movie
 
@CowperKettle Exactly.
 
When we went on night bicycle rides to some lake, I would imagine that this lake would look the same 3000 years ago. The same dark lake, and silence. Only absolutely no roads, only thousands of kilometers of woods. Yet there must have been people there back then. They must have had a hard life.
 
@CowperKettle Are you and I following the same twitter feeds?
@Robusto Psychology and sociology, when they do quantitative studies, have always been considered towards the less rigorous side. Their fields have been going through a 'replicability crisis' in the past fifteen years, where they're finally trying to clean up. Other areas are getting concerned.
 
6:19 PM
@CowperKettle Indeed. But I expect they had their joys and sorrows like everyone who's ever lived.
@Mitch I would expect so. Nowadays it seems like the push is toward psycho-pharmacology, or maybe that is beginning to wane.
> Study after study shows that psilocybin — a psychoactive compound in magic mushrooms — can rebalance the brain and may help treat psychiatric conditions like PTSD, anxiety, and depression. A study published in April went further: compared to the classic antidepressant Lexapro, psilocybin is a more effective antidepressant.
 
@Robusto wow...I find that hard to believe. It makes it sound like it is prescribed more often than SSRIs
I feel like I only heard about it being used -very experimentally- in the past year
 
As I get older I constantly have to reframe what is actually new versus what I am only now discovering.
There is so much information out there now.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if it had -some- antidepressant effect though. but that headline makes it sound like more people are being -prescribed- the mushroom derivative
 
Maybe you're just reading it that way.
 
oh.
Yes
'effective'
 
6:27 PM
I edited their headline for brevity, too, so that confusion may be on me.
 
I was reading that word wrong
I'm still a bit skeptical. There were all sorts of claims about LSD that didn't pan out.
Cripes. CBD sellers claim it can cook you toast in the morning.
I don't know what claims I'm thinking of for LSD. probably antidepressant also? (in much smaller doses than can give you hallucinations)
But anyway, about the 'replicability crisis' in psychology, despite what we learned in highschool science about Einstein and the precession of Mercury's orbit, most qualitative hypothesis driven science is about setting up the hypothesis between boring and exciting and if the stats lean towards boring you try again and again and if it comes up boring every time... just don't bother writing the paper. Journals don't care about boring.
One thing that is a result of the replicability crisis is that researchers are supposed to 'pre-register' their hypotheses (before they run the experiment, before they do the stats), and even if the results are not published in a good journal, at least in the registry it'll be made public so that everyone can see non-results.
This doesn't fix everything about the problem, but it is a good move, because 'non-results' (ie boring results or repeated confirmation that there is no or little effect) is a good thing to be made known. It's not that common yet though.
 
@Robusto Yes, but also much less reliable than other types of psychology, I believe.
@Robusto No, indeed; but then it is a social science, not an exact science, is it?
@Mitch Yeah that is a big problem when your material welfare depends on publication.
@Mitch Yes, that is a good meta-measure.
But I also think social psychology has some internal issues regarding methodology.
@CowperKettle What I find annoying is that they don't explain what "neural replay" actually is.
I am unable to understand what it is exactly that is happening because of that.
Is this a natural process that occurs spontaneously?
Is it something that is induced by the researchers?
How?
 
6:44 PM
@Cerberus I think perhaps it's not exact because it's not being studied as rigorously?
 
@Robusto By exact I meant when the input can be quantified.
So surveys and observing people does not give you exact data, whereas measuring distances or particles does.
 
7:03 PM
@Robusto I agree. I would have looked with disdain to the earlier days of medical science as well
@Cerberus yeah I think that would probably be the source of my skepticism. Whenever I hear a counterintuitive psychological theory, I tend to think "like how exactly did they experiment and find this out? Probably just asking people guided questions on how they feel or something"
Of course it's probably much more rigorous than that, but I'm not gonna pursue more of something I don't find interesting.
The wave of "conservatives more likely to be evil" posts on psychology blogs / news sources also puts me off.
Like recently, someone asked me on those Iranian ELL chats I mentioned earlier what "the hedonic treadmill" is. I just Googled it, and it says "after a while you're not gonna be as happy as you were when you bought your new BMW." Now there are three parts to that, the main part is "No shit, Sherlock", the second is saying people are gonna back to a baseline happiness all the time, which is just blatantly obviously false, and the third is conclusions probably drawn from that that are absolute BS.
 
@Cerberus That's what I meant as well. I just phrased it poorly.
 
7:19 PM
@M.A.R. Exactly.
But I think one of their problems is this: they are trying too hard to be an exact science, by putting all of their measuring energy in statistics.
However, the input data are often not that suitable for various kinds of statistical analysis.
But the most important thing is how they try to interpret the statistics.
That sometimes seems to be done out of thin air.
They just think up any kind of possible explanation, and say, this is probably it, and that gets published.
But any interpretation should be based not on mere correlation, nor on the mere intuition of a statistician, but on a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanism. And that is what often seems to be absent from their interpretations.
In general, proof requires correlation + a deep understanding of the underlying mechanism.
But, when they do use underlying mechanisms, those were often established by similarly dubious interpretations of by others.
Do the interpretations of social psychologists are not seldom a bit like a house of cards.
@Robusto Right, and it's also the way they apply interpretation, in a superficial way.
<rant ends here>
 
@Cerberus Recently one of our professors asked us to fill a survey for a student's thesis. Things about how much we're enjoying the course, how much, on a scale of 1 to 7, does the final score matter, how much learning matters . . . The questions were absolutely uncreative. I looked at them, and thought, "yeah, I absolutely might lie at every one of these and not even know about it". I bet their future analysis would say something like "32 % of the students wanted to learn and the rest didn't"
It feels cheap.
I filled quite a few surveys during my dialysis days too.
To their credit, the surveys were anonymized and we did it twice with random question orders.
It's just . . . I don't feel like any reasonable interpretation can come from that.
 
questionnaires...pfft
 
8:11 PM
 
9:09 PM
@M.A.R. Yeah, that is a problem.
And marketing people use the same, but worse, methods.
@M.A.R. Perhaps with dialysis they can compare the results between different people.
But any absolute statement is dubious.
 
 
2 hours later…
10:52 PM
@Cerberus uh...
 
@Mitch Context, Mitch.
 
is there some sort of litterary precedent to hipsterism
 
11:22 PM
@Cerberus that is an absolute statement. So I doubt it.
 
11:34 PM
Doubtful!
 
11:49 PM
@Cerberus Are you calling me a liar? Or worse, an unreliable narrator of myself?
 
I called you a Doubtful.
 
@shintuku Depends on what you mean by hipsterism. Are you referring to hippies from the 1960's? Or 2010's Brooklynite avocado toast eaters?
In other words, do you have a clear definition of what 'hipsterism' means?
@Cerberus That seems pejorative.
 
Are you sure?
 
Also disingenuous
@Cerberus As sure as seeming can be.
 
Or are you in doubt?
 
11:52 PM
@Cerberus With all these questions, you're worse than being in doubt, you don't even know.
Cripes. What I do know is that a dog that barks continuously with no provocation is annoying.
 
Thanks.
 
@Cerberus think nothing of it
 

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