English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

CowperKettle

01:08

Dialects of Polish reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/165g4hs/dialect_map_of_poland

alphabet

01:24

Some people should read questions before deciding that they're duplicates: english.stackexchange.com/questions/611958/…

That question has absolutely nothing to do with the alleged duplicate. Though it may be unanswerable and deserve closing for other reasons.

CowperKettle

01:51

I felt tired on Monday, and slept about 60% of the daytime on Tuesday and Wednesday. I hope today I'll be less tired.

And my blood sugar mildly increased, as it does during these tired/sleepy episodes. It spikes to 8 or 9 mmol/L an hour after a meal, and then slowly comes down to 6.

Champion-level Drone Racing using Deep Reinforcement Learning (Nature, 2023)

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CowperKettle

02:20

Why Russia Isn't Actually Collapsing

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Russia's national debt is only at 15% of its annual GDP

The war may drag on for years.

alphabet

02:56

@CowperKettle I do wonder how the Ukraine issue is going to play out in the next US election season. Trump seems to think he can end the war by...giving Putin what he wants. Which might very well work.

Not to make everything about America, of course.

CowperKettle

04:08

@alphabet Wouldn't Trump lose due to the demographic changes alone? Because there are more Black and Hispanic persons in the US every day, and they should not like him

alphabet

@CowperKettle Yes, but most of them are in states that would already have voted for Democrats. Because of the Electoral College, that demographic change has less of an effect on the presidential election.

This is why, in 2016, Trump won despite getting 2 percentage points fewer votes than Clinton.

Of course, there's also the fact that 38% of Latino voters supported Trump in 2020 (up from 28% in 2016).

SmokeDetector

05:10

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword with email in answer, email in answer, potentially bad keyword in answer (165): Negative sentences‭ by Paypalforsale‭ on english.SE

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword with email in answer, email in answer, potentially bad keyword in answer (165): "User accounts" or "users account"‭ by Paypalforsale‭ on english.SE

CowperKettle

05:54

@alphabet Oh.

> - When we finally marry, Kolya, we'll have three children.
- How do you know?
- Because they are at their grandma now.

CowperKettle

06:27

Etymology of the day: tomb - from Latin tumba from Ancient Greek τύμβος (túmbos, “a sepulchral mound, tomb, grave”), probably from Proto-Indo-European *tewh₂- (“to swell”).

So, tomb is cognate with tumulus, an ancient burial mound.

Toome

Toome or Toomebridge (from Irish: Tuaim, meaning 'tumulus') is a small village and townland on the northwest corner of Lough Neagh in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It lies in the civil parish of Duneane in the former barony of Toome Upper, and is in the Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council area. It had a population of 781 in the 2011 census. == History == In the 5th and/or 6th centuries, there was a woman in the parish of Dún dá Én (Duneane) known as Ercnat ingen Dáire. In 800 she was remembered as a saint but her cult was forgotten.Roddy McCorley, a Presbyterian radical, was a local of the...

Xanne

07:06

Wordle 803 4/6

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CowperKettle

07:28

I forgot the name of that AI guy who is super-positive about the prospects of AI

CowperKettle

07:54

Geoffrey Hinton Collision 2023 Speech (with subtitles)

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> - In 2019, you said that AI systems are still very far from approaching humans. And now you're warning of this. Something has changed? Are they getting close?
- It's the LLMs that are getting close, and I still cannot understand how they are doing it.

An interview given a month ago by one of the "fathers" of the deep learning theory

CowperKettle

08:31

Goodbye, summer. 😥😥😥😥
Please find attached a link to a Ukrainian song about summer sunbeams. Prominchiki (промінчики) is diminutive for "sunbeam", hence, a "little sunbeam", or, if you will, "sunbeamkin" (with the German -kin)

Промінчики

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The song is nice, it uses some wordplay and obscene lyrics (yeblo is an oscene word for "face") - "prominchiki biut pryamo u yeblo" = "little cute sunbeams are hitting me right in the fucking face".

And the refrain "prominchikami pryamo u yeblo", if sung without hiatuses, can be understood "I was really fucking hammered with cutle little sunbeams"

Because uyeblo (pronounced together) is the past tense of "I was heavily fucking struck"

If taken separately, u (у) is a preposition "into"

yeblo = fucking face, mug

uyeblo = "was heavily fucking hit"

The song starts with "Vitaminchik de? - Vitaminchik tut" (Where is the little vitamin? The little vitamin is here")

The wordplay here is that de (where) sounds exactly like the letter D, so you can understand it as "Vitaminchik D".

The -chick ending is hypochoristic/diminutive.

Vitamin -> vitaminchick (cute, tiny, little dear vitamin)

So you can understand the first words as "Vitamin D", which is in line with the title of the song, because it's the sunbeams that help synthesise the vitamin D in the body.

I love this song, it's silly but well-rounded, without extra obscenity. Just enough obscenity, balanced by sunny music and hypochoristics.

And a great banjo solo

CowperKettle

10:44

Weeaboo word of the day: dakimakura (抱き枕; from daki 抱き "embrace" and makura 枕 "pillow") is a type of large pillow from Japan which are usually coupled with pillow covers depicting anime characters.

vioria - ляльковод (Official Audio)

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I've just learned this word from this Ukrainian song.

Learning Japanese words from Ukrainian songs is a traditional Russian pastime.

Laurel

11:10

Having said, "unsee" as a verb is creeping into the language, at least informally, as in "I wish I hadn't seen the awful murder scene, but unfortunately there's no way I could unsee it". — BillJ 2 hours ago

It's always intriguing when someone complains about a word that's over 100 years old

CowperKettle

11:41

@Laurel There's also the nice verb to unass

unass

Verb: unass (third-person singular simple present unasses, present participle unassing, simple past and past participle unassed)

(US military slang, transitive) To get out of (a vehicle or building).

M.A.R.

12:32

The NNS with the ananas unassed the NNS without ananas.

@CowperKettle America's system is dumb because of some historical nonsense. So essentially after a 51% majority the rest of the votes in a state don't matter. California is 90% blue.

And a state with 10 times the population of another has the same vote.

And both parties are too far up their own ass to try to 'fix' the system without the other party filibustering or blocking it

Unless they throw Trump in some unaccessible smelly dark pit in a lvl 20 dungeon, it at the very least feels like Trump has a better chance than 2016. And since this is sometimes like poker "feels like" might just cut it sometimes

Daily Octordle #582
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Still got it

alphabet

13:03

@M.A.R. It is somewhat proportional to population. The number of a states' electors is equal to its total number of Congressional representatives, i.e. 2 senators plus the allotted number of House members.

Democrats want to fix this because it disadvantages them. Republicans don't want to fix it for the same reason. It's not just the filibuster; you'd need to amend the Constitution, or find some clever workaround like getting a bunch of states to assign electors based on the national popular vote (which is quite unlikely to succeed).

Amending the Constitution is, intentionally, extremely difficult and would require all Democrats and a very large number of Republicans to agree (which never happens on any issue, let alone this one).

The easiest way to "amend" the Constitution is to get the Supreme Court to reinterpret it, but that won't work here.

Robusto

@CowperKettle Cf. "unfuck": meaning to straighten up a situation or a person: "You better unfuck yourself right now or I'm gonna put my boot up your ass."

jlliagre

13:19

@CowperKettle You can't unshit the bed.

alphabet

I suppose "unfuckable" is one of those morphological ambiguities. "That situation is [unfuck]able" vs "that guy is un[fuckable]."

Robusto

#Worldle #587 2/6 (100%)
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⭐⭐🪙
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

alphabet

John Lawler pointed out that "unlockable" has this problem; does it mean "able to be unlocked" or "not able to be locked"?

Robusto

@alphabet I think that would get confused with the negative of the adjective "fuckable."

alphabet

@Robusto Exactly.

Robusto

13:30

🌎 Aug 31, 2023 🌍
🔥 16 | Avg. Guesses: 4.35
🟨🟧🟨🟩 = 4

globle-game.com
#globle

Wordle 803 3/6

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Mitch

13:50

@CowperKettle The only 'AI guys' that are 'super-positive' about the prospects of AI (ie optimistic) are CEOs trying to sell their stuff

Musk (who is obviously disconnected from reality with AIs), Altman of OpenAI/ChatGPT (who might be sincerely promoting his company while also sincerely recognizing AI might have risks or who might be disingenuously advertising his company), Sutskever the brains behind OpenAI/ChatGPT (who is recently famous for referring to 'hints of AGI/superintelligence (I can't find the exact quote))

Yann LeCun (head of Meta/FB AI) is fairly optimistic about AI, is sane about AGI/superintelligence (says we're no where near), thinks most concerns about fears of AI are unfounded (they are either science fiction or addressible by engineering).

You linked to Hinton. He's famous for being super-optimistic a few years ago, saying that no one should study radiology anymore because AI would do it. This is famously false (slow incremental progress, and AI will be used as a tool to enhance, not replace). He's also famous for in the past year for turning pessimistic mostly because he used ChatGPT and he was impressed (or gullible).

So I'm not sure who is the super-optimistic person you're thinking of.

There's lots of super-pessimistic people, but they are super-pessimistic in very very different directions. Yudkowsky thinks AI's are going to kill us all pretty soon (this is not hyperbole). A number of saner people think AIs are going to/already are ruining our lives.

Mitch

14:10

in other news..

wow what's up with this guy...

Who long is an extended word said (deleted but viewable with enough rep)

Keeps posting questions that get badly downvoted (for whatever reason), posts a meta question about why the closure, then deletes their user account.

Bubeck is the 'Sparks of AGI' guy. (half lauded, half ridiculed for using those words)

user 726941

14:28

...in more other news: I've stopped watching the news.

Mitch

@user726941 somehow it all still trickles through

through elevator music?

through dogs being walked by?

stops drinking water

Ah... found it...

CowperKettle

Mitch

it may be that today's large neural networks are slightly conscious

CowperKettle

A man from Yekaterinburg is picketing in Moscow along with his son, who is dying from spinal muscular atrophy and cannot get the drug. The local (Yekaterinburg) Ministry bought the drug, but Moscow anonymously advised not to use it in Russia, because it's too expensive and others would clamor for it.

Mitch

Also greatly lauded and ridiculed.

CowperKettle

14:34

@Mitch The statement that they are conscious is ridiculed?

@Mitch I recalled his name - it's Yann LeCun

Yann LeCun is wildly panglossian about the AI

@user726941 This is good news!

I'm constantly backsliding and starting reading news again.

I should read then only once a week.

@Mitch Yes, he seemed to be a bit too optimistic to me.

He thinks there's no danger at all with AI

At least that's the feeling I got when I used to read Twitter

I wonder why eczema always appears at the same spots.

Although I"m not even sure it's eczema. I don't know how exactly they distinguish it.

A guy wrote in a Russian psychiatry forum that he was using psylocibine mushrooms and smoked some weed, and started having auditory hallucinations, and he stopped using the substances, but three months have passed, and he's having hallucinations still.

The voices are commenting on his life, and can appear at any time of day (waking hours).

I googled and found no mention of long-term auditory hallucinations triggered by mushrooms. They can trigger psychosis, but does he have psychosis? He has insight into his condition.

user 726941

15:05

@CowperKettle yeah, there are just way too many negative emotions affecting me.

Laurel

@Mitch I'm not sure what bucket I fall into. I think AIs are cool but I'm also spending a lot of time helping to clean up after their crap

CowperKettle

I wonder if people would want to expand their capacity by connecting their brains directly to some AI chips.

Mitch

@CowperKettle Yes. The idea that LLMs (many matrix operations on text strings) has a semblance of consciousness is ridiculed.

@CowperKettle Out of all the main personalities being voiced, he is the most optimistic. But he is definitely not panglossian. LeCun is well aware of the dangers of AI, he is just not a doomer and he thinks that better engineering will help (but not solve) current AI problems.

@CowperKettle He seems overly optimistic only in comparison to the many loud people who say we're all gonna die soon. I would label him simply as in the optimistic direction, maybe not plain old 'optimistic' definitely not polyanna/panglossian

@CowperKettle He's well aware of the problems of AI.

CowperKettle

Ah! Then I was wrong.

Mitch

@CowperKettle He's usually responding (if not directly to some other tweet then to something in the news or in the air) about hyperbolic imminent doom. He's responding to hyperbole. Saying we're -not- all gonna die soon.

@Laurel That seems pretty realistic.

@CowperKettle I'm sure there are thousands who would volunteer immediately.

Whether it's remotely possible is another story.

@CowperKettle LeCun is optimistic, but he's not denying that there are problems.

Altman seems disingenuous to me... he seems to be in the doomer camp, saying AI -might- kill us all.... and then in the next breath saying we're trying to make product safe. It's almost like the ads for sildenafil that say 'if it lasts for 4 hours, consult a physician' which probably deserves an ER visit, but as for advertising it's awesome. @alphabet

CowperKettle

15:32

Sildenafil can also cause bad effects on vision.

But generally I think it must be a good drug.

Maybe they'll come up with a better version, with less spooky side effects.

Mitch

You are right in that LeCun seems the most optimistic of them all, but since you're looking at twitter many others give me the impression they are much more optimistic and not in a sober way.

Mitch

15:54

re Altman

> I was at a party recently, and happened to meet a senior person at a well-known AI startup in the Bay Area. They volunteered that they thought "humanity had about a 50% chance of extinction" caused by artificial intelligence. I asked why they were working at an AI startup if they believed that to be true. They told me that while they thought it was true, "in the meantime I get to have a nice house and car".

michaelnotebook.com/oppenheimer/index.html

CowperKettle

16:09

Word of the eve: brae - sloping bank of a river valley, from Old Norse bra (eyebrow, eyelash)

> Sweet Molly MacDougal, in labour,
Warned her sister, "It hurts like a sabre.
Sin bears a high price,
So a girl should think twice
What she bares on the braes for a neighbour"

@Mitch LOL

MetaEd

16:36

Persons.

CowperKettle

18:17

The figures for 2022 puts Canada in the top 3 consumers of antidepressants across the world, right after Iceland (157.3) and Portugal (150.5).

MetaEd

19:10

huh. have some friends who moved to Portugal and love it there. people are so friendly :D

Mitch

THEY'RE ALL GAMING THE SYSTEM.

"Happiest countries" in Europe lead consumption of antidepressants. Iceland and other Nordic countries are among the most dependent. Portugal, UK and Spain double the consumption in two decades

Robusto

@Mitch Can't they just get drunk like normal people? Oh wait, they do that too.

Mitch

In my quick perusal of the entire internet, I also came across this:

"There is no evidence in the medical literature that people who do not have depression will benefit from taking antidepressants and feel “happier” by doing so"

So my master plan of adding zoloft to the drinking system may well not work as intended.

Robusto

And if it does we're in worse shape than we thought.

Mitch

Yes. It is all very depressing.

sigh

OMG we should be depressed about our state of depression.

And possibly we should be depressed about that.

BUt I'm pretty sure we do not need to be depressed about being depressed about being depressed about being depressed.

Robusto

19:20

Daily Quordle 584
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Mitch

That's just common sense.

MetaEd

Wordle 803 3/6

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Robusto

We could be in for another Great Depression. Which would be supremely depressing.

Mitch

@Robusto I've heard (= heard it on NPR or read it in the New Yorker) that Iceland was having a teenage drinking problem (too many teenagers having alcohol related hospital visits) but they solved it.

Literally solved it.

By..

and I'm sure you're curious to know...

and since NPR or the New Yorker told me, it must be true...

it was after-school programs.

Keep the kids occupied from when school ends until dinner time.

sports, basket weaving, fidget-spinners, whatevering

Robusto

Let the kids have sex, I say. They won't even be home for dinner.

Cures the drinking problem, and probably other things as well.

Mitch

19:26

Are you effing kidding me? Who's gonna take care of those babies? Grandma.

And if grandma is taking care of babies, she'll be too tired to take care of grandpa.

Robusto

They'll have to take the birth-control course.

Free condoms and pills and all that.

Mitch

And what is grandpa gonna do with all his free time not being taken care of by grandma?

Heroin

hm

maybe that all works out?

Robusto

Except then grandpa gets constipated from all the opiates.

Mitch

oh shit

Robusto

no shit

Mitch

19:27

c'est le cas de le dire!

well... he was probably constipated already

Robusto

@Mitch That's a depressing attitude.

Daily Octordle #584
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Weak.

Mitch

@Robusto i think that paper did justify that antidepressants do work for those people who -are- depressed already. So there's some hope.

In my quick perusal of the entire internet, I also came across this:

Robusto

19:54

And ice? Somebody's just making shit up now.

Mitch

20:12

@Robusto snort

that was me

I did that

I couldn't help myself

you'll notice that the alignment and color aren't exactly right.

But the point is...

was there a point?

Yes, the point is that in my search for much more important things about Iceland...

(it was the Atlantic that wrote that article about solving teen alcoholism and drug use)

(They're all pretty much the same thing, New Yorker, Atlantic...

Harper's

some other magazine that thinks they're so smart but pretty much make up shit out of whole cloth, but because they can put two words together it makes lower apes impressed with their Ivy League English major bullshit.

where was I?

Robusto

@Mitch Brat.

Mitch

Oh yeah

)

The point is that google is pushing their beta 'AI' summary for whatever your search is.

That doctored entry?

You'll be disappointed to know was not created by Google's LLM.

Sorry

I don't work that way

The screen shot I doctored was from their -existing- suggested searches.

They've had the 'suggested' searches for years.

I love them

because I never know what key words to use that -other- people will have used.

I know -my- keywords are right

but other people, thousands of other people, have misused their words and so it's hard for me to search for -other- people's mistakes.

Other people are the worst.

anyway, what are the top three industries in Iceland?

How could one of them -not- be ice?

I know

You're curious

What is that third one really?

I could tell you but you'll be disappointed

Aluminum smelting

no shit

How can you have a country where that's the third most... most something industry?

I thought'd be Björk

Robusto

Why does Amazon's "Suggested for you ..." books always look like things I would never, ever read?

Mitch

@Robusto I mean really, yes, you are right, I -do- have much better things to do. A lot better. Actually I did that to interrupt something that was already interrupting something I should be doing.

Robusto

@Mitch Maybe aluminum figures of smelt (the fish) are popular in Scandinavian countries?

Mitch

20:24

@Robusto Or the exact same thing I've bought from them but in hardback.

@Robusto That's a rational question to be asked of these perverse Icelander's who've let their teenagers have too many babies, disrupting their grandfather's sedate lifestyle.

Robusto

And god forbid you should ever buy some fireplace tools, because they'll be nagging you to buy more, and more, and still more, because maybe you caught the fireplace tools bug and suddenly you're hooked and you have to keep buying, even when you run out of fireplaces to put them by.

Mitch

@Robusto I do think that is a problem they're trying to work on, 'search for semantically nearby items, but remove things you've already bought'

except for batteries and socks. you could always need more.

and breakfast cereal. we're all out.

maybe some other things.

Robusto

@Mitch That would seem to be an easy fix. So easy it's something I would simply add if I were a dev on that project, even before anybody complained.

jlliagre

Icelandic solved the aluminum/aluminium controversy by calling it just ál.

Mitch

@Robusto to be serious, I don't think it's -that- easy. some parts yes (like suggesting the exact same book).

hm... now that I think of it, I can't think of the other nearby cases. I thought I had thought of them, but I can't remember them now.

@jlliagre uh... there's no controversy

or should I say con 'tro ver 'sy?

No I shouldn't because that would be ludicrous.

lu 'di crous?

See, that's ludicrous.

jlliagre

20:36

Aluminium or Aluminum? Why do Americans Say Aluminum

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Mitch

@jlliagre I don't understand that image. It should say 'Why do Brits insist on being so weird?'

Robusto

@jlliagre The list of spelling sins fostered by the British are endless. They never resist the urge to put in an extra vowel.

jlliagre

@Robusto That's because they love French so much.

MetaEd

I'm 91 messages behind? Jesus, you people.

Robusto

20:53

@jlliagre They don't "love" French. They just look at you as competitors in the supererogatory-vowel-addition competition.

Vikas

@Mitch Which one? Horseshit?

Michael Rybkin

21:30

Could you tell me please if this piece of text sounds fine to you guys?

- What did he do to deserve that?
- Stole a chicken.
- God... I wonder what they would've done to him if he raped someone!

Robusto

@MichaelRybkin Better would be "if he'd raped someone, but you'll probably hear it also as you had it.

jlliagre

21:59

#waffle587 4/5

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩⭐🟩⭐🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

🔥 streak: 25
🥈 #wafflesilverteam
wafflegame.net

Michael Rybkin

@Robusto Thank you.

Mitch

22:49

@Robusto Also if @MichaelRybkin changed 'someone' to 'it'

@MetaEd 91? That's it? We have more.

@Vikas Nah just plain old shit.

no trying to mislead of nothing. just ... shit.

it's laying right there.

not lying. that would be worse than misleading.

MetaEd

23:23

@Mitch I know that about you

Robusto

23:40

@Mitch Yeah, that would have been the joke version.

alphabet

23:52

I have decided to manage my ADHD by becoming progressively more addicted to energy drinks. Sadly, this has not improved my ability to clean my apartment.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…