@Robusto Derry Girls does that.

@Mitch Since when are you a Derry Girl?

BTW, I did enjoy that show.

@M.A.R. N-Acetylcysteine seems to help some people w/schizophrenia

Glutathione is also low in people with keratoconus, so I sometimes took NAC + Glycine to see what it does

> Currently NAC has the most evidence of having a beneficial effect as an adjuvant agent in the negative symptoms of schizophrenia, severe autism, depression, and obsessive compulsive and related disorders. Future research with well-powered studies that are of sufficient length will be critical to better understand the utility of NAC in the treatment of psychiatric disorders. link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40263-022-00907-3

Proper evidence is lacking, though, as evidenced by "future research will be critical.."

> During his time at Stockholm University, he researched the relationship between language and reality by studying the analytic philosopher W. V. Quine. He also did some turns on London's stand-up comedy circuit.

@CowperKettle I tried it once when I was dealing with depression; my doctor said it'd helped a few of his patients. But it gave me really nasty acid reflux and nausea so I had to stop taking it.

@alphabet Yes, reviews seem shaky to say the least

The only thing that's been helping my 'depression' is methylfolate

@CowperKettle Said doctor still doesn't know what exactly happened to me, but now I'm back to my normal, poorly-managed-ADHD self.

@alphabet I'm glad to hear you're feeling (relatively) better!

Starting as a delivery boy improved my condition a lot.

Maybe because liver has a high B12 content

@CowperKettle Anyway I had to get a brain MRI recently (long story) and it came back normal. Sadly they do not yet have the technology to find out in what precise ways my head is effed up.

Huh. Apparently my new doctor's website lets me view the MRI imagery myself online.

@Robusto How did you figure it out?

You know I kind of wish I didn't know what a cross section of my head looked like.

My brain looks weird and I don't like realizing that I'm using it to write this sentence.

@alphabet I think the image is less problematic than seeing an actual cross section

I can confirm that the contrast agent makes my brain much shinier.

@Mitch I don't think I'm at much risk of seeing that, fortunately.

@alphabet They found an area of gliosis in mine, in the quadrigemina, but it's an old area, dating at least several years back but unnoticed until this spring

@alphabet I have all my MRI/CT scans in full on my HDD and on a backup HDD and on a USB drive :)

"There’s Now 1 Fast Charging Station for Every 5 Gas Stations in California" gov.ca.gov/2024/04/27/…

There is an actual electric car store in Yekaterinburg.

2100 used cars were sold in Russia in Q1 2024, which is 11% more y/y autostat.ru/news/57464

AliExpress is working again in Russia, it turns out. But the descriptions of their wares are as psychodelic as they were.

I wonder why can't they hire a retired teacher or dozen to improve the descriptions. Probably the sales are good as they are

I remember there was a story - by Ray Bradbury - or a part of a larger work - in which there was a woman who drove an electric car in the 1910s or 20s. Was it in "Dandelion Wine", I wonder

> The green machine in Dandelion Wine is an electric car. In the story, Miss Fern and Miss Roberta bought the vehicle from the salesman William Tara.

Cosmology of the day: baryon acoustic oscillations

> In 1970 Sunyaev and Zeldovich predicted the existence of baryon acoustic oscillations, regions of dense gas where galaxies would have formed in the early universe and that would appear as brightness fluctuations in the CMB. These oscillations were first observed in 2001 by balloon-based microwave detectors.

@Mitch It was the cute little Catholic girl uniform.

Pity he doesn't come here anymore.

A couple of these have been posted before. Lucky I remembered them.

@Robusto I -have- had comments made about my legs.

Are y'all sure that (1) isn't in South Korea? :D

(I nailed that one because we've seen it before.)

The only one that really stumped me was (4). I'm not sure how I could have done better. :/

And I've been to (2).

@XanderHenderson That one was featured before, possibly before you started this game.

It was a red herring for sure, which is why I remembered it.

Ah. Sad that they are already recycling images, given that it says that this is only #62.

#1 was a do-over, since they screwed it up so bad the first time around.

@Robusto Sure sure. But (4)?

I feel cheated. :(

@XanderHenderson Yes, I did too the first time I encountered it. What are you supposed to do with someone's picture of a place within one country that is a foreign enclave?

This game has many flaws. Like the Asian cooking one.

@Robusto Yeah, I took a wild guess on that one, based on the language on the box and my general feeling that "Those people look pretty Han, maybe?" And the cuisine seemed moderately identifiable. But it really was just a wild guess (the year was a little easier, based on the grain of the photo, but that is also something of a crapshoot).

(no shooting craps in the chatroom please) 🎲🎲

@XanderHenderson The precise location of #1 is less wrong than when it was the previous time but still can't be what the map shows. The street on the picture is clearly sloping while the one on the map is on a flat island.

@jlliagre Sure, but you generally get full points if you are in the correct city, so I'm less worried about that.

@jlliagre I think they put out an alpha version of the game.

An ideal game would have subtle clues that a diligent search could unveil. Not clues that took you in the wrong direction completely.

Right now some of these places you'd have to have seen with your own eyes. And remembered.

@Robusto Yesterday's #5 had a couple of clues I was happy to find. The year (actually the following year) and the blurred first letter(s) of the city were on a ribbon holding a card: '2010 Host City - Welcome to Durban'.

@jlliagre Nice. We should have more of those. I rage-quit after the first one yesterday, which seemed unfair to me.

@Araucaria-Him You never really state why your George Bush syllogism is not valid; it fails because you (deliberately) failed to distribute the middle term in the syllogism..

I nevertheless upvoted since your answer is better than the others anyway.

@Robusto Sunny weather, left hand traffic, palm trees, neat streets, bricks made me think about Australia.

@jlliagre The problem is, we have plenty of places right here in the US. Not the left-hand traffic, but IIRC that clue wasn't at all clear.

If it was, then I was just being obtuse.

@Robusto Look at the right turn arrow on the opposite side of the street.

@jlliagre That escaped me. I guess I was just obtuse, or else I hadn't had enough coffee. It happens.

@jlliagre But ... in the past there have been cases where the pictures were flopped horizontally.

"Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?"

@user70432 It counts lots if they're deep fat fried with a cajun batter.

@MetaEd Some of it is like a wind that passes by, existing only for the moments where it cools you down. Some software is like a metal grating, that once made never moves from it's spot.

There's COBOL code from 1963 that is running the international monetary exchange at this very moment.

@Robusto 'The Old Museum' sign is not flipped.

I just remember getting annoyed. So I quit. I had no time because I had to get to a ride.

@Robusto Okay. Was flopped a typo or can you say flop like you say flip?

I know flip-flop.

@jlliagre Flopped wasn't a typo. The meanings intersect.

Thanks.

Flop usually has overtones of a large flat thing being placed down or turned over. Like in poker (Hold'em) the board receives a flop of three cards, but single cards are flipped over.

Flop is used in French in faire un flop: to fail for a show, a movie, etc.

Yes. Meaning it falls flat on its face.

Flop is also slang for taking temporary accommodations, either with someone else or at a cheap hotel (a/k/a "flophouse").

To pretend to be injured in a sporting event in order to get a foul called on an opposing player is also called "flopping"; soccer (your football) is a prime example of that behavior. Also called "taking a dive."

@Robusto We call that simuler une faute or faire une simulation. The French verb flipper means to be anxious, to freak-out.

@jlliagre Is flipper derived from American slang "flip out"?

Because they mean the same thing.

My guess would be yes, unless it were the other way around.

@Robusto It definitely comes from English and was originally related to drug use. The verb is now less extreme than 'flip out'. Someone qui flippe is stressed, worried but usually doesn't express it that much.

@Robusto I'm not absolutely sure what you mean by that. From my kind of background it's because it's n inductive inference.

@Mitch It's worse than that. pcworld.com/article/468250/…

I think they mean "Yes, Minister" there. @Cerberus would know.

The latter would be clearer if "dog" were used instead of "lion" (since a lion is also a cat ;)

@Robusto The first couple of seasons are Yes, Minister. Then he becomes Prime Minister, and the newer seasons reflect that in the title.

@Cerberus Thanks.

@Robusto It started as "Yes, Minister", but became "Yes, Prime Minister" when the main character became Prime Minister!

@Robusto I get the form of the fallacy perfectly, but the term "not distributed" is still opaque to me right now.

People and their terminology...

@Mitch LOL

> A common false etymology holds that the word "corduroy" derives from the French phrase corde du roi or the cord of the king.[2][3][4]The word corduroy is from cord (i.e., rope) and duroy, which was a coarse woollen cloth made in England in the 18th century.[5] Notwithstanding, the etymology of duroy is uncertain and that word alone may derive from du roi (of the king) even if the full phrase does not.

@Araucaria-Him Of course, whether it's valid as an inductive inference will depend on what account of induction you accept, and you might think that a number of other things need to be established in addition to the premises you cite. But I digress...

Word of 03:19 am: anthrobots

Word (or phrase) of the day: "no makeup" makeup. Makeup designed not to make it appear like you're wearing makeup.

Example use: "Our purple and gold glitter eyeshadow gives you that perfect 'No makeup, just naturally punched in the face by a unicorn' look"

@Cerberus animals get by just fine without words

Exactly.

We don't need words; we have paws.

I mean it's no nobel savage thing. All those animals have parasites and shit and die in half the time they would have survived as a pet

Also anthrax

@CowperKettle he has some good ones about psychiatrists and pediatric oncologists

Well

They're all good

Did I say 'nobel'?

I did.

Well it's not some.nobel thing either

Nobel prize in literature, for furspeech.

I couldn't comprehend French furspeech from Snowpaw.

Did you know? The word for "human" in Raccoon literally translates as "stripeless idiot"

TIL the code golf site has a furry chatroom?

Yeah. And the chatbot broke months ago.

And consequently, the room's been frozen. Dang it.

How can anyone praise the suburbs this much without mentioning the easily accessible trash cans?

Incidentally: if anyone crosses me, I'm going to threaten to start writing all my posts this way.

Giggles, looks down at paws, contemplates how to climb bird feeder pole

@Araucaria-Him OK, don't worry about it. This is the term I learned in Logic when we studied syllogisms. Think of it this way: A:B, B:C :: A:C. The middle term, B, is properly distributed. The form above, which is in the form A:B, C:B :: A:B. The middle term is not distributed properly.

@Robusto Ah, OK, I think I see where the terminology comes from. Thanks :)

@alphabet Yes, you digress!

"Distribute" is used in a confusing manner.

In red, those who haven't discovered zero yet ;-)

@Araucaria-Him Typo: The conclusion of the incorrect one should be A:C, not A:B.

Is English schwa phonetically consistent?

My /ə/ often becomes [ɘ] or even [ɨ], so

@jlliagre Huh?

Sino-Korean has 영(零) for zero; wdym?

@DannyuNDos You haven't a zeroth floor!

Oh.

I agree that the 0th floor should become a thing, indeed.

But the real question is... Is 1st basement actually a negative 1st floor?

Elevators should display as such.

@DannyuNDos They do here: -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3...