This might be useful to share here:

Etymology borstal - inherited from Middle English *borstile, *borghstile, from Old English beorh (“a hill”) + stigel (“a stile”). The institutions are named after Borstal Prison in Borstal, Rochester, Kent, England.

@M.A.R. I envy you

I wish you to pass with flying colors

@Laurel Re your question earlier: on a certain forum, someone is currently advertising a "Pre-Valentines Orgy" scheduled for 2/11. That's certainly one way to celebrate.

@M.A.R. Congratulations and good luck!

Marine term of the day: anadromous fish (they swim up the river to lay eggs), from ana = up; dromos = to travel, to run

@alphabet This message threw me off because the only Question I've asked recently was the one I linked above about the OED and I was struggling to see the relevance lol

@Laurel Ah. I meant the "are orgies real" one.

Well, I'm not that naive, I just don't know how common they might be

I'm debating whether or not I want to know the logistics of who they're letting in to this event :/

> Today in Science, we train a neural net from scratch through the eyes and ears of one child. The model learns to map words to visual referents, showing how grounded language learning from just one child's perspective is possible with today's AI tools.

science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi1374

@M.A.R.

@Laurel Apparently you have to be attractive enough to meet the host's standards. Dunno if I'd qualify.

It is for "DL fit jocks, bros, and dads aged 20-40."

It's being held in a hotel room. Hopefully the walls aren't too thin; I'm guessing whoever's staying in the adjacent rooms may be less than thrilled.

@Robusto Off by 84′ 5¾″.

@alphabet DL?

@Laurel urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=DL

Literally it means "closeted," but here I think the intended meaning is "straight-acting," i.e. not effeminate or somehow "obviously" gay.

> HYGIENE IS IMPORTANT. Please come showered and clean. Due to limited space in the hotel room, we will be inviting a small group of 15 to 20 guys to ensure everyone has enough space for enjoyment. All participants must be drug and disease-free (DDF), with the exception of poppers. Please provide pictures of your face and body for the invitation. This event will be a mutually enjoyable experience.

> Anastasia Yershova was detained and given a 5-day arrest in Nizhny Novgorod for wearing rainbow-colored frog earrings meduza.io/news/2024/02/01/…

@alphabet It's written like a parody. Like what type of hotel room fits that many lol???

@Laurel No effing clue. But based on past experience (no, I won't explain), this is almost certainly a legitimate event, and it lists 18 RSVPs from ostensibly typical users.

@alphabet D:

It just seems like such a bad idea on so many levels

@Laurel Some would consider the benefits worth the risks, apparently. Incidentally: I didn't quote the post in its entirety because the rest is, shall we say, even less appropriate for SE chat.

:l

Hey, at least they limit which drugs are allowed. Though I doubt that that policy is strictly enforced.

Alexander: The Making of a God on Netflix is good, I think.

> Researchers made a pioneering advancement in neuroscience by creating the first-ever 3D-printed brain tissue that exhibits growth and functional capabilities akin to actual human brain tissue.

neurosciencenews.com/3d-printed-brain-tissue-25554

> A new study unveils the brain's inner workings for speech generation, leveraging Neuropixels probes. This leap in understanding opens new paths for treating speech disorders and crafting voice prosthetics.

neurosciencenews.com/speech-production-neurons-25549

Are narcissists srable? Or likely to break down, blow up, something in between?

How do I prevent a word from being autocorrected without disabling the autocorrect feature on the phone?

@Vikas LOL

@Xanne They are very srable, especially under covfefe

@CowperKettle Can you set an autocorrect/text expansion rule to correct that word to itself?

@CowperKettle It's a real problem.

Most of the times, autocorrect saves my time on phone. But sometimes, it wastes some time.

@Laurel That defeats the purpose. There must be some movement to indicate that I want this particular word to be rendered as is.

Just that I can't google it up - the results page contains unrelated results

For iOS, you'd have to tap the "suggestion" on the left; the highlighted option will be autocorrected to if you press space

But I'm pretty sure you have Android and idk how exactly that works

It's a bit of a faff to set a rule for Kornam, a drug which I will use two times in my life.

I learned this word a year ago from a UK guy on Twitter.

Ah well, I wasn't sure if it was a specific word. See if your autocorrect works like the one on iOS. I think a lot of people just don't pay attention to the small hints given by the interface like I do…

@Xanne I am not a psychologist, but I'm pretty sure that instability is not one of the signs of narcissism. I don't think it is even a common comorbidity (eg like depression is sometimes a comorbidity of anxiety). Which is not to say that narcissists are not sometimes unstable.

Wow that was a lot of intertwined negation.

To translate. Narcissism and instability (changing mood irrelevant to environment) have low correlation.

@tchrist Yup.

Hiding in plain sight. Damn.

@Mitch According to Reddit and TikTok, everyone everywhere is a toxic narcissist and you should go no-contact with all of them for your own mental health.

Also according to TikTok, narcissistic personality disorder is a form of neurodivergence that we should stop stigmatizing and associating with abuse.

Anyway my point is that the word "narcissist" has lost meaning to everyone except Christopher Lasch.

@alphabet Ah, the protean Prof. Lasch. He somehow managed to flow through a plethora of opinions about everything in his short little life.

Tough one.

@alphabet no need to Lasch out like that

@CowperKettle whenever autocarrot hypercorrects me, I undo its choice and it learns to ignore the word after a couple of tries.

@M.A.R. Whenever I have to type "i.e.," it always messes up. Never learns.

@user85795 who is it meant to inspire? Are there many 95 year-olds out there who are ambivalent about enrolling in a program, who are convinced by this article?

Maybe it's inspiring young people to get to 95.

his effort is inspiring

Inspiring who to do what?

everybody to keep trying

If you say so

I wanna start a novel. Any recommendations?

start writing

Reading one. I'm too lazy and self-conscious to write one.

have you read the quran

@user85795 spoonfed so many stories since childhood I might as well have read all of it.

It's like Star Wars here. You are exposed to dozens of takes on every scene even before having watched the thing in the first place

I don't know either.

spoon feeding, in the long run, teaches only the shape of the spoon

But nice comparison.

@Cerberus ?

@user85795 well I suppose the biggest issue I would have with it is inconsistency, which would be okay if people didn't constantly keep insisting it's consistent.

how many pages is it

@M.A.R. Colleen Hoover seems popular /s

@user85795 I suspect that there are multiple editions.

and authors

A feature common to all these anthologies. Something happened, someone is narrating it, and for every story you find its opposite, morally speaking. Sometimes mercy is pretty awesome. Sometimes butchering your prisoners is shrewd. Sometimes bad things happen to bad people and it's sad, sometimes we're supposed to be giddy

@alphabet she has blocked me from visiting her website.

What a brave and courageous stance.

@M.A.R. You're better off for it.

> Whose truth is the lie? Stay up all night reading the sensational psychological thriller that has readers obsessed, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Too Late and It Ends With Us.

@user85795 Star Wars or Quran?

Quran

I hear Credence by Penelope Douglas is popular.

Quran doesn't come in a single size, so I dunno about page count. In a common A5 (?) page size format, it's 600 pages and change

> Iran won't start a war but will respond to bullies, says President Ebrahim Raisi

Begun it has, the verbal war.

@Vikas Ra'isi wouldn't know about verbal wars if they bit him in the ass

@M.A.R. how about author(s)

> Three of them, one of her, and a remote cabin in the woods. Let the hot, winter nights ensue in this steamy dark romance from New York Times bestselling author Penelope Douglas, now with bonus material. Tiernan de Haas doesn't care about anything anymore.

@Vikas Pretty sure Biden said something like that before ordering airstrikes.

@M.A.R. Any novel by Ian McEwan will do the trick.

You're killing it with these suggestions alph

@user85795 God et al.

@M.A.R. Neither Star Wars nor the Quran.

@alphabet Yeah :D

@M.A.R. The "them" is her stepfamily. Yikes.

@alphabet Exactly what a narcissist would say

Anyway I'll read the Quran when the movie comes out

@user85795 You never hear about the 95-year-olds who flunk out, do you?

@M.A.R. From the same author that gave you The Book of Mormon.

@Robusto true dat

or any of the flunkies

@alphabet The Book of Mormon is Bible Fanfic

@alphabet They also gave you South Park

@Robusto Dude. The losing part is the miracle. Why such a hater?

@Mitch never a boring moment in the book. Unlike those pansy authors who take a dozen pages to describe the scenery. It dives right into the action.

@M.A.R. How about making character judgements by describing people's faces?

That always sets the scene so nicely.

@Mitch Don't be a sourpuss.

@Mitch A thousand words are worth a picture.

@Robusto Exactly.

It's constantly like "Hi. Anyway God is awesome. Know why? Remember Joseph/Jacob/Ismael/those 'Bani Esraeel' dorks? Yeah they got what was coming to them"

Wait.

What are you calling me?

Umamicat

@M.A.R. Yo mama cat.

@Mitch Did nobody make The Passion of the Quran yet?

Your high cheekbones show a nobility of spirit, but you downcast eyes show humility.

Or is it guilt?

@Laurel Yeah, but they were beheaded.

@Mitch You should have been a phrenologist.

@Mitch drooping eyes. Drug overdose

@M.A.R. Sour at first but eventually won't kill you.

@Robusto I have a diploma on the wall.

@M.A.R. Or needs a nap.

@Lambie maybe I'll give him a try

@Mitch nothing like a nap after drug overdose

@Mitch PhD?

@M.A.R. Official medical advice. I'm already ordering the coffee mug.

@M.A.R. He has some of the most gorgeous sentences and descriptions in contemporary English.

@user85795 Phrenology D.

The D stands for 'D'.

Or the other way around.

I didn't get a PhD in 'standing for'

@Mitch You need a headhunter, not a picture frame.

@Robusto The picture frame fits the paper much better

But I'll try your way

@M.A.R. Try American Gods.

@Mitch DPhil?

@user85795 No, he means Doctor Phil.

@Robusto it's somewhere in the middle of that never ending to-read list, but I never get around to it

@M.A.R. Well, get off your pharmacologist ass and start reading.

I never figured out. Was Dr. Phil a quack, or?

Was, and is.

And if he survives, will be.

> A couple interesting facts about Dr. Phil are that he has written 17 books, hit a pedestrian on a skateboard in 2017, and that he is not licensed to be a therapist on national television.

So this guy was on TV for a couple of decades, without a license, and nobody stopped him?

I don't think you understand television.

@M.A.R. He always reminds me of Hank Kingsley:

Except Kingsley is actually funny. Dr. Phil doesn't even have that going for him.

Man it's disappointing to learn that the world is just as messed up as your own place sometimes

@Robusto OMG I love that actor

Jeff Tambor?

Yup.

He is awesomely talented.

Malenkov in The Death of Stalin

@M.A.R. Wait, people thought his show was therapy? I thought it was more akin to dogfighting

@Laurel I haven't seen his show. I've just seen him mentioned here and there

Everyone loves to hate him

@M.A.R. This video sums him up in the first four seconds:

LoL

@Laurel no no you're thinking of that show that always ends with the mother-to-be saying "Maybe it's not -my- baby"

@Mitch No, I'm pretty sure I'm thinking of the show where they "cash [each other] outside"

@Laurel It is entertaining, seeing all of his ridiculous antics and dumb hot takes. And the "patients" are often not mentally ill, just assholes who thoroughly deserve the mess they're in. Is he still sending teens to that abusive pseudo-jail?

@M.A.R. IIRC you don't need a license to offer therapy for free; since he doesn't charge his "patients" he doesn't need a license. (He also doesn't really claim it's any sort of medical treatment.)

@Laurel cool cool cool the show I'm thinking of it all happens inside

@jlliagre Yeah, my sentiments exactly.