@Mitch It means: Klan meeting tonight! Don't be late; don't enter after the porch light goes out, you might get shot. And just tuck your guns in the back of your pants and form an perimeter around the yard, facing out, until I flash the light a few times. And if anybody happens to drive by and slow down, to look at the balloons and wonder (Is it a wedding reception? There can't be that many in one day… Did Walmart run out of colored birthday balloons?), then approach menacingly… Yep.

The 1980s were weird

Minus 12°C

People whooshing past on bicycles, but no electric scooters today

Sales of electric cars and plug-in hybrids in the Netherlands:

Every 4th newly sold car in the Netherlands in 2021 will be capable of running on batteries.

Word of the day: beatitudes (do not confuse with beautitude)

How Certain Gestures Help You Learn New Words - Scientific American

Ah. Turns out there is not even such a word as "beautitide"

> Back in 1995, a study showed that such emblematic gestures facilitated French-language learning. Even transferring the words to a new context worked better: When learners accompanied the new vocabulary with gestures, they were more likely to use the words in new sentences.

So. Tool-use improves grammar learning. Gestures improve word learning.

A tool-using, highly gesticulative writer should be brilliant in grammar and vocabulary.

> In 1966 the Federal Trade Commission ordered Merck and Company to discontinue the false claims of germ-killing and pain-relieving properties for its Sucrets and Children's Sucrets throat lozenges.[4] In 2011, Sucrets reintroduced their product back into the familiar tin due to popular demand and nostalgia.

@Mitch and The Crying Game! Who won, exactly?

I used to love Sucrets.

I never tried them..

I just came across the mention of their active ingredient in a brief review of a study of a murine model of autism, where it improved mitochondrial function. spectrumnews.org/news/…

I started reading up on Psyllium, a kind of additive prescribed by a cardio doc to me, and...

Ooops

Quite dangerous to clnical workers.

Twenty cases of anaphylaxis to a psyllium-rich cereal were reviewed shortly after its introduction. Fourteen of those affected were nurses. It was concluded that these nurses were sensitized from job-related inhalation exposure

It keeps you regular, it kills your nurse.

Just a list of medicines available in the USA

Expanded by leaps and bounds in a mere 15 years.

@KannE Klan meeting? Google told me it meant 'supports survivors of child sexual abuse'

wait... that doesn't mention mailboxes.

So really? Klan meeting? (not unlikely but I can't find anything online that says the same thing)

@Xanne Wild cherry... mmm...

but of course with that medicinal cherry taste

which I find was not on purpose...

I realize in my dotage that many things I believed as a child as intentional injustices were really just the way nature happened.

like all those cough drop flavors, they taste so medicine-y and fake, it turns out that cherry juice soldified into hard candt always has that 'off' flavor.

watermelon drops? sort of off? that's just how it tastes if you let watermelon juice age and cook and get candified.

Banana? same weird kind of taste in candy form.

But cherries are the most egregious.

On a tangential topic: raspberries are not blue

@Mitch funnily the "bacon" flavour of many bacon flavoured crisps is something like dried tomato and dried onion

for example

I get heaps of abuse on the local webforum each time I post some research about how the vaccine saves lives.

There is a whole long forum thread of antivaxxers frothing at the mouth.

are they upset because wanting to be anti-vax is now associated with Russia, and they conflate Russia and "commies"?

oh, you post in Russian forums?

Yes, the e1.ru ))

@Mitch Not in Greenbow, Alabama! Hahaha! Child abuse. Wow, that is a stretch… Their leader had to wave them off us; terrifying. It was actually in the rural areas of SE Alabama. Less than 2 hrs from from Panama City Beach, FL. That was the only good part about it. And I did have some awesome professors, semi-retired. The president and some other faculty were ousted by affirmative action. The town was largely segregated by choice until they built a Walmart there in the early 90s.

Walmart had to drive the segregated grocery stores out of business. They sold a loaf of bread for 19 cents, regualr mac-n-cheese for 6 or 8 cents per box. White cheddar was 12 cents—Woo hoo! So we splurged; why not?

Segregated stores? Black or white people could not use them?

They were segregated by choice. We didn't know. We went to the "Black grocery store" and were stared down. I asked my college friends why, and they told me. I thought the college was different, a haven from it all, but it wasn't. Not if you were Black. I found out much later how poorly they were treated there, students and faculty. I couldn't believe it; unreal.

Every time I see a black person on the street I diligently try not to stare. But they are so rare here that I still try to look on them.

Because it's so exotic. A man or woman with black skin ))

I first saw one in 1996, when I was 18.

Wow. Well, my first husband was from rural Iowa. And that had nearly the same situation back then. Only one Black man ever came into their HyVee grocery store, but that was because he was the only Black resident, not due to segregation in the same sense.

God, I hate ELU, most of it anyway. It's become a vacuum of despair. Hahaha. That sounds like a good poetry title, Vacuum of Despair. I think you could work wonders with that, CowperKettle.

I hope I haven't lost your poems.

They were copied and pasted somewhere.

@MattE.Эллен No kidding! Not outside of candy/popsicle flavors they certainly aren't. I blame low-grade dumb-cameras that misreport purple as blue. Or people just need more color-words in their vocabs.

@MattE.Эллен LYING LIARS!

@KannE Note that ELU is not some vague, transcendental, corporate, ethereal (that is not a contradiction in terms) thing. It is a handful of individuals (or even individual actions) that collectively you hate. Lots of people here are quietly think their disagreeing thoughts but are polite enough not to speak them out.

@tchrist given the number of colour names for paint... there must be a Pantone for raspberries?

@Mitch it's a travesy. they're even labelled vegan! Vegan bacon crisps!

You're welcome

@Mitch not blue in the least

@Mitch thank- oh

@MattE.Эллен Oh. Then they're not totally lying. They're just saying nonsense. Vegan bacon. All animals involved here are not dead.

@MattE.Эллен On the internet it's already been done

oh shit

we've already been through this!

I wonder if ...

spinach syringe

now there's a non-sequitur if ever I read one

hah. Never before has that ever

goddamit

exploratorium.edu/snacks/photosynthetic-floatation

sobs softly into hands

I guess it could have been worse

please don't think up any thing weird

please

how about...

@KannE which is all to say it should have been a non-issue entirely to edit out the slur since its was entirely gratuitous. (ie the question didn't even remotely require any context involving the slur)

awful emocore banana

@MattE.Эллен isn't 'awful' a bit redundant?

@Mitch wonderful emocore banana

there you go

no results on duckduckgo

at least, not in the image search

good move though... if MI5 ever gets ahold of that search history...

the british gulag

I hope they never see my search history, because that means I'm under suspicion of something :-s

Italian bus stops, where people don't queue up they all just mass up near the door.

@MattE.Эллен That's a very concerning remark to make.

makes notes

But making notes is a very concerning thing to do

side eye I'm on to you, copper

crumples up note paper. slowly chews

be sure to chew at least 20 times before swallowing

@Mitch They do that in London, too, now that the by-law which required queueing is repealed. (Doesn't stop glares and tutting, though)

Oh, you see that as politeness. We do not. We see that as a problem, or part thereof. So much so that it's almost a cliché: 'the old cliché “one man's meat is another man's poison.' Wait, that's OL&G's… You got me hooked on the waits. I think it's fine, whatever.

@Mitch The Dutch don't queue up either.

@KannE I was being polite in calling it polite. I mean, calling out someone for being rude is somewhat rude. Really the annoying thing I find here is people closing questions for weird bureaucratic reasons. Just answer the question if you know something relevant, or ignore it if it doesn't interest you.

@Cerberus starts to question the Netherlands admittance to the UN

@AndrewLeach A tut though is all you get? I'd go for some serious tsking.

@Mitch I don't think it will ever happen.

I'm reading an article about keeping a list of achievements to show during your performance review. It has this line:

> All humans are influenced by recency bias. As a result, we will favor recent events over historical events.

It made me chuckle

I do prefer Bake Off to WWII

It's fun, huh?

We've watched the Dutch and English versions.

Minus 7°C, nobody playing ping pong

It might be too cold.

Yekaterinburg's first institute, the construction of which started in the summer of 1914. The Ural Mining University. Tsar Nicholas II signed the decree on launching the institute in January 1914.

Education started in the fall of 1917, quite a time!

Peter von Weynmarn, the first Head of the Institute.

When the Reds advanced towards Yekaterinburg, von Weynmarn relocated the Institute to Vladivostok, and then travelled to Japan on a research visit, and when the Reds occupied Vladivostok, stayed in Japan.'

Peter von Weynman and another Russian chemist, Zlokazov (a typical Uralian surname) at their laboratory in Kyoto, with postgrad students of the Kyoto University.

Quite a life.

Russian German flees to Japan and sets up a lab there to teach chemistry.

On the porch of his own house in Kobe, Japan. Had he remained in the USSR, he would have been in the GULAG at that time.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Repeating characters in answer (79): Usage of "go to" vs "go" by Émile Larocque on english.SE

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in answer (88): Is it “the xᵢ’s” or “the xᵢ”? by Samuel Price on english.SE

It seems Ashworth has seen fit to approve of one of my long-ago posts, and to make sure I know he did that. What did I do to deserve such a signal honor?

> What is the giving up of life, to a noble soul, or to ten thousand noble souls, compared with the giving up of fifteen dollars out of the greedy grip of the meanest white man that ever lived on the face of the Earth? — Mark Twain, "Letter to the Earth"

@MattE.Эллен Humans? Pfft. Hominids are the worst.

@CowperKettle The pingpong balls shatter on any surface

Actually, at a certain point in my life, that would have been incentive enough to buy a whole pack of pingpong balls go out there and smash away

@Cerberus Of WWII? Not to give anything away but the end is somewhat bittersweet.

@tchrist: Another mass shooting in your neck of the woods.

What is it about that area that makes people want to kill lots of their fellows?

@Mitch I'd say Heel Holland Bakt / The Great British Bake-Off is every so slightly less violent than WWII.

@Robusto OMG. But at least he managed to wedge in a little splinter of criticism for you.

@Cerberus GBBO they're all so polite and helpful to each other. WWII ... I don't know.

@Mitch Yeah the Dutch version is very similar.

Do you like the English version?

@Cerberus Yes... but...

weirdly I find it really tense, but also really boring

@Mitch you bovines are all the same, always mooing about something

@MattE.Эллен Moo? I'll give you something to moo about.

Mooooo

This mobile interface keeps hiding what I'm typing

The full interface does the same, but is feature complete

@Mitch It is tense!

But boring I find it not.