English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

00:01

@CowperKettle That means: waiting-queue.

jlliagre

@Cerberus Is Google allowed? ;-)

Cerberus

@jlliagre Hehe no.

The subject is not extremely interesting, perhaps.

It is not an "ah-hah, wow" thing.

But most of the country is red.

I suspect quite a few countries will have the same issue.

jlliagre

Traffic-jams?

Cerberus

Nope!

At least not literally.

CowperKettle

Cerberus

00:04

@jlliagre The issue was indirectly aggravated by the Russian invasion.

@CowperKettle Who could have thought of that answer? Brilliant.

CowperKettle

LOL

jlliagre

@Cerberus Yes, AIG reached!

Cerberus

@jlliagre It must be, since this answer is beyond me.

jlliagre

@Cerberus Gas?

Cerberus

@jlliagre Getting closer.

Hint: redder is badder.

CowperKettle

00:12

jlliagre

@Cerberus Mysterious. Countryside is worse. People are waiting?

Crossing the border to Belgium or Germany, would the color be the same?

CowperKettle

> Researchers from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument have released the most extensive map of our cosmos to date—and they’re not done yet. A future map will increase the number of included galaxies from 6 million to 40 million

40 million galaxies.

There must be other racoons out there.

jlliagre

@CowperKettle I hope they'll give each one a unique fancy name like Milky Way, not some random number.

CowperKettle

> .. a research group in China has shown that many entangled photons can be generated inside the myelin sheath that covers nerve fibers. It could explain the rapid communication between neurons.. phys.org/news/…

(Bullshit or not?)

jlliagre

@CowperKettle Ask ChatGPT!

CowperKettle

00:21

The AI Bubble: Will It Burst, and What Comes After?

►

Cerberus

@jlliagre Good question. I don't actually know: it might very well look very different just across the border.

I know this issue also affects Belgium, and it probably also affects Germany, but I don't know.

I don't know in which parts of Belgium it would be the worst, nor how bad.

jlliagre

@Cerberus "Transport capacity beschikbaar without waiting queue". Is it a commodity?

Cerberus

00:39

@jlliagre The problem is related to something that is a bit similar to a commodity. This something may be called a commodity.

It is not named in the text.

jlliagre

@Cerberus Too bad I just wasted my daily miracle playing WhenTaken. I really need another one to guess it.

Cerberus

@jlliagre You are already in the right direction.

But it may not be an interesting enough subject to make you spend a lot of mental energy on.

jlliagre

@Cerberus But in the dark.

Cerberus

@jlliagre They are really trying to prevent that, whence the red zones.

Maybe a little hint: there is something about France that makes me expect this to be slightly less of an issue there.

jlliagre

Water?

Cerberus

00:51

Nope.

Shall I say it?

jlliagre

@Cerberus Go ahead.

Electricity?

Cerberus

Spoiler.

@jlliagre Ding!

In the nick of time!

Is the issue less pressing in France?

Because it has a big alternative source of the stuff?

jlliagre

Okay, it wasn't that uninteresting. Yes, not an issue now because of that.

Cerberus

Nice.

Though I wonder to what extent this source will help if the use of the stuff I mentioned increases even more.

By the way, we are busy planning to make more of those sources now, too.

jlliagre

@Cerberus What surprises me the waiting list part. Are these new "delivery points" and/or capacity increase? It looks more a distribution issue than a production one.

Cerberus

01:05

@jlliagre Yes, this is only about the transportation, not the production.

Any project or organisation that wants new access to the grid must wait in those zones.

So you can't build new houses there.

Nor connect new businesses.

jlliagre

01:24

#WhenTaken #173 (18.08.2024)

I scored 810/1000 🎉

1️⃣ 📍 3864 km - 🗓️ 2 yrs - ⚡ 129 / 200
2️⃣ 📍 227 km - 🗓️ 7 yrs - ⚡ 183 / 200
3️⃣ 📍 3501 km - 🗓️ 6 yrs - ⚡ 128 / 200
4️⃣ 📍 8 km - 🗓️ 12 yrs - ⚡ 179 / 200
5️⃣ 📍 675.1 metres - 🗓️ 7 yrs - ⚡ 191 / 200

https://whentaken.com

@Cerberus Locating #5 was kind of miraculous.

Cerberus

Hmm.

OK will try Sunday's presently.

Cerberus

01:41

1.

jlliagre

01:52

@Cerberus I wondered what a "Thud Driver" could be.

Cerberus

Yeah, I Googled it.

I tried to Google the location.

But I don't see how I could have found it.

jlliagre

Yes, no clue at all.

Cerberus

The second one is also hard.

2. So you guessed the other city.

The third one is hard as well.

jlliagre

02:08

Right.

Cerberus

3.

It had to be one of three places. I didn't guess the right one of the three.

And the year was hard for me.

It is so hard to guess the year in the countryside, because people are dressed so unfashionably.

This ↑ was about 4.

4.

Much surprised about the year. Look at all those cameras!

jlliagre

02:25

I thought exactly the same.

Cerberus

02:47

Ah!

About 5, I have a clear idea of the region.

CowperKettle

> All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I'd started from;
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.

Millay of the day

jlliagre

03:03

@CowperKettle Haha. I selected Millay and asked Google to translate it to French and it replied Grossier.

Cerberus

@jlliagre Found number 5 in Google Maps!

Funny enough, now that I'm there, I recognise the street from an earlier When Taken.

jlliagre

@Cerberus I (almost) found it without GM :-)

Cerberus

How could you possibly have guessed the right place without it??

5.

I managed to guess the year by comparing the foliage and the markings on the road to the situation in Google Street View.

The markings are a bit more faded.

jlliagre

03:21

@Cerberus That's the miracle I talked about. Well, I had an idea about the region. It's clearly not Toronto. Then I remembered about a place I was in vacation where I met several Canadians that looked like there. Finally, I also know this place is a tax heaven so a good location for a bank.

Cerberus

The trees have a lot more leaves.

jlliagre

I clicked on the right street, that was miraculous.

Cerberus

@jlliagre Right, but RBC has offices all over the entire larger region.

Like thousands of km to the right and south.

Any place that is or was a colony of the same country could have been it.

Thought it did need to have the appropriately well-to-do architecture.

But there are quite a few places that have it and also offices of the right bank.

I look at a lot of them, all over the region.

#WhenTaken #173 (18.08.2024)

I scored 833/1000 🎉

1️⃣ 📍 1213 km - 🗓️ 2 yrs - ⚡ 164 / 200
2️⃣ 📍 568 km - 🗓️ 1 yrs - ⚡ 182 / 200
3️⃣ 📍 3494 km - 🗓️ 12 yrs - ⚡ 114 / 200
4️⃣ 📍 10 km - 🗓️ 14 yrs - ⚡ 173 / 200
5️⃣ 📍 11.6 metres - 🗓️ 0 yrs - ⚡ 200 / 200

https://whentaken.com

jlliagre

@Cerberus When I said I had an idea about the region, that was rough, thousands of km. I wasn't sure at all to pick the right place.

Cerberus

@jlliagre Yes, I guessed that larger region too.

The people, the weather, the architecture.

I mean without looking anything up except the coat of arms.

jlliagre

03:29

Okay, it's late. Bye!

Cerberus

Sleep well!

jlliagre

Thx

Vikas

03:46

@CowperKettle Too long. Wish there were some summary.

MetaEd

04:17

Wordle 1,155 5/6

🟩⬛⬛🟩⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Vikas

Pretty green.

Xanne

04:55

Wordle 1,156 4/6

🟨🟨⬜🟨⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜🟨⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Xanne

06:07

Harris proposes the ban corporate price gouging. But in a clip I saw of a speech she gave, she calls it “corporate gauging” (rhyming it with caging or raging). One wonders what the mental process is here.

Xanne

06:27

“the” should be “to”

Or maybe the speechwriters don’t get the spelling, and she just reads a teleprompter.

user 20458579510081670432

06:52

Yeah, I'd go with the "teleprompter" idea.

I watched a documentary once where a very young Biden copied his speech ideas from a Brit politician.

Cica 1987

Not that the other guy is any kind of original or unique character.

CowperKettle

09:50

@Vikas He believes that the current approach will not get us to AGI, and we need to combine neural nets with "old school" AI, as he foresaw in the 1990s.

But I'm not an expert.

Vikas

@CowperKettle But I think that's possible.

Michael Rybkin

11:28

Hey, guys, could I please check with you these sentences?

1. I would have really liked to see a longer version of it. 13 minutes is just too short.
2. If the organization is nontechnical, management should consider outsourcing even before the site grows to 200 computer users.

user 20458579510081670432

13:31

They sound understandable to me.

M.A.R.

@MichaelRybkin both sound fine to me.

@Xanne maybe "gauging" sounds more economistical.

Michael Rybkin

14:53

@M.A.R. Thank you very much.

@user20458579510081670432 Thank you.

What exactly does "bumped off" mean in this context?

Another benefit of CHAP is that this authentication process can take place several times during the course of a connection. This limits the possibility of being bumped off and having an impostor "hijack" your connection.

jlliagre

15:46

@MichaelRybkin I understand it to mean that someone brutally disconnects one side of the connection without the other side being aware and then take its place by spoofing.

user 20458579510081670432

Kind of like being bumped out of a line up by a pushy person behind you.

M.A.R.

16:48

@user20458579510081670432 I was thinking it's like a car bumping into yours and driving you off the road. Too much Fast & Furious, to my chagrin.

user 20458579510081670432

That works.

Xanne

20:46

@M.A.R. No, MAR, there’s a large scholarly literature on price gouging, nothing on gauging. In general price adaptation to shortages turns out to be good. As far as I know there’s a lot of competition in the food business.

Xanne

21:22

The US is all set up to deal with monopolies, price fixing, etc. We’ve got laws, precedents, agencies, regulators, the entire panoply of the modern state. And a bunch of local AG’s not averse to making a name for themselves.

Dannyu NDos

21:38

Ridiculous fact: When I was ordering at Lotteria (a Korean rival to McDonald's), I once got a ticket whose number was 666.

jlliagre

@DannyuNDos You win the lottery!

Dannyu NDos

Lmao

Lottery for what? For mere burgers?

jlliagre

21:56

lotteria

Noun: lotteria (plural lotterias)

lottery
billet de lotteria ― lottery ticket
lotteria f (plural lotterie)
lottery
sweepstake (horse racing)

(4 more not shown…)

Number of the beast

The number of the beast (Koinē Greek: Ἀριθμὸς τοῦ θηρίου, Arithmós toû thēríou) is associated with the Beast of Revelation in chapter 13, verse 18 of the Book of Revelation. In most manuscripts of the New Testament and in English translations of the Bible, the number of the beast is six hundred sixty-six or χξϛ (in Greek numerals, χ represents 600, ξ represents 60 and ϛ represents 6). Papyrus 115 (which is the oldest preserved manuscript of the Revelation as of 2017), as well as other ancient sources like Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, give the number of the beast as χιϛ or χιϲ, transliterable in Arabic...

alphabet

23:10

@Xanne Um, I would not say that our government is effective at stopping monopolies or price fixing. We have all those institutions, but corporations have so much influence on every part of the process that it's pretty feckless.

Case in point: the Justice Department is only taking action against Google's search engine monopoly now, after they've spent the past 15 years profiting off it.

Criggie

Does it help to consider the Justice Department itself is a monopoly ?

Its not like we have "Dave's Discount Cop Shop" down the road in competition....

Not legally, anyway

alphabet

Set the mall cops on 'em.

Though, as I recall, price-fixing schemes are sometimes taken down through class-action lawsuits filed against the conspirators.

Criggie

Consider the Fire Service - back in ye olde dayes, fire protection was a commercial operation and you were only protected if you'd pre-paid.

Now its a monopoly.

Mitch

@Criggie holy shit

alphabet

That still happens. The celebrities in California all have fancy private firefighters so that the massive wildfires don't affect them: nytimes.com/2019/10/26/style/…

Mitch

23:19

It's a snake biting it's tail

Criggie

On the other side, there are multiple ambulance services in my country. St Johns is the main one, but you can book an ambo for your sports events that costs less, from someone else.

Mitch

We need competition on which government we have

I mean multiple governments at the same time vying for our voting dollars with advertisements

Dannyu NDos

@Mitch Ouroboros.

alphabet

Here, when you get crushed by a train, you yell at passers-by not to call an ambulance because they'll charge you a thousand dollars you can't afford: usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/07/03/…

Mitch

@alphabet I feel safe doing a U-turn in front of an on coming ambulance, because ... you know... if there's an accident, an ambulance is right there

alphabet

23:30

It's OK to jaywalk in front of an ambulance, right?

Mitch

What? No! That's illegal!

alphabet

What's wrong with making them wait? I assure you that nothing an ambulance does is more important than my trip to Starbucks.

Mitch

Oh, Starbucks? Sure, in that case it's OK.

But be forewarned that the ambulance is not even going to think about waiting

tchrist

Quite the contrary. i found out about this monumentally ugly synonym or near-synonym of "twilight" only today and i felt almost physically hurt. @weathervane — S K 4 hours ago

Puffed up peeving by the ignorant does not a question make.

But not half so glum as he'll be once someone full of glee gloats that the gloaming goes from gloom to gleam or vice versa. He hasn't a glimmer of that glamour yet.

Mitch

Glitter

tchrist

23:41

Glister.

Mitch

Glisten

tchrist

Glom on to the peeve.

Glaumaturgy is next to thaumaturgy.

Mitch

@tchrist that'd be an interesting dictionary

tchrist

@Mitch rev | sort | rev

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…