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December 19

.kp domains

How many .kp domains are there? Gnu779 (talk) 13:10, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Did you see .kp#Existing_and_externally_accessible_domain_list? Polygnotus (talk) 19:10, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

https://www.northkoreatech.org/the-north-korean-website-list/ is a bit outdated but has more background info. Polygnotus (talk) 19:20, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

It's ok, bro. I can still view the outdated ones with the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive. Thanks, Gnu779 (talk) 16:10, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

December 24

Is this bug in the google search ?

I searched for the keywords: "Israel Folau" "Margaret Court" "David Tyree", then Google shows me blank. Is this bug?HarryOrange (talk) 22:35, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

If I do the same search, this question shows up (twice, due to how the refdesk is organized) plus a link to Stuff. So, it doesn't seem to be a bug. I tried the same format search with much more famous people and got hundreds of links. Matt Deres (talk) 13:20, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

Remember that Google has numerous servers that can respond to your search, and they do not necessarily all behave the same. --142.112.149.206 (talk) 22:17, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

December 28

File disambiguators (1): Explorer/W11

Óla! So Explorer adds (n) to a file with a duplicate name to an existing one. Do you have suggestions how to easily identify and delete them? The search option doesn't recognize parentheses, so a search would merely identify files with that number in the title. The reason for asking is that if a folder has a large number of duplicates that should be deleted, it would be easier to sort/select/delete rather than ctrl+click individually. Thank you! 2.28.124.91 (talk) 16:31, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

https://www.alldup.de/alldup_help/alldup.php and then set it to compare 100% of the content. Polygnotus (talk) 17:16, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Thank you Polygnotus, that's great, and freeware too. It looks like it might take some getting used to! Cheers, 2.28.124.91 (talk) 18:13, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Use a better search program - FileLocator will find * - Copy (*).*, and I'm sure there are others with will also do the job.

Use the command prompt, eg dir "* - Copy (*).*" works. (You can also use del similarly, but do so with caution and at your own risk.)

Mitch Ames (talk) 09:35, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

December 30

Selecting multiple items in checkbox on this website. Is there an easier way?

Please look at this link:

https://www.archonia.com/en-us/search?q-a2%5B0%5D=1&q-a2%5B1%5D=2&q-a2%5B2%5D=3&qf%5B0%5D=3046&filter_string=doctor%20who

On the left of the web page you will see a checkbox "Status" with 3 items checked. The problem I have is that the only way I can get multiple items checked is by editing the URL. If I just click on an item in a checkbox on this website the other items get unchecked. In other words: the checkbox works like radio buttons. I tried a different browser; I tried ctrl-click and shift-click and alt-click. Nope. On other websites (here for example) I do not have this problem. Do you experience the same inconvenience? And if so any ideas on how to do this easier than by url editing? 213.126.69.28 (talk) 11:55, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Not necessarily AFAIK, and that's coming from someone with experience in web design. You're unfortunately seeing their poor web design. TheTechie@enwiki (she/they | talk) 00:17, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Windows 10 Bin

Doing a quick search online I realized that the path to the Windows recycle bin is C:\$Recycle.Bin; however, for some reason I don't understand, it doesn't seem to be the "Recycle Bin" on the desktop, they just seem to be two different paths (explanatory screenshot at the following link: [1]). Are they actually two different paths? If so, why? If not... why aren't the two windows synchronized? 2A01:827:160:D601:2E75:E3BA:BBBF:B55D (talk) 14:35, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

January 1

Question(s) about Arch Linux

Moved from User talk:TheTechie § Aaaaarrrrchh brrr!

@TheTechie ... A question? Do you used archinstall to install Arch Linux? I think i will install Arch Linux, cause, i want BTW Vitorperrut555 (talk) 23:31, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Moved this here as I found this to be a better place for it. As for your question, no, I used text commands. Though I may be able to help. Any specific questions? TheTechie@enwiki (she/they | talk) 00:32, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

@Vitorperrut555 TheTechie@enwiki (she/they | talk) 00:41, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

When I installed Arch Linux, I used a live-boot USB. Once booted, it has an "install" icon that can be used to do a basic install. Then, once installed, you can customize it by removing and adding the packages you like. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 15:42, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

December 19

Does human DNA become weaker with each generation?

As with photocopying something over and over, the text becomes less clear each time.

Does human DNA become weaker with each generation? HarryOrange (talk) 21:22, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Sure, DNA replication is not perfect, although proofreading reduces the error rate to about 1 mistake per 10⁹ nucleotides (see our article on DNA Replication). But that is per generation of cells, not of the whole organisms. Many mutations will be neutral in effect (because much of our DNA is redundant), some will be deleterious, and a few might be advantageous. It is the process of natural selection that hinders the spread of deleterious mutations: sometimes this aspect is called purifying selection. One thus usually expects a stable mutation–selection balance over time rather than that "DNA becomes weaker with each generation". Medical science is reducing the selection pressure against some mutations, which consequently may become more common. One of the problems for asexual organisms is referred to as Muller's ratchet; assuming that reverse mutations are rare, each generation has at least the mutational load of its predecessor. In contrast, in sexual organisms genetic recombination generates the variation that, combined with selection, can repair the situation. Sexual organisms consequently have a lighter genetic load. JMCHutchinson (talk) 22:42, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

So purifying selection won't work properly in case of Inbreeding ? HarryOrange (talk) 23:16, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

The larger the degree of inbreeding, the larger the chance that deleterious traits are expressed. But this very expression of traits leading to decreased biological fitness of their bearers is what actually enables purifying selection in the longer term.  --Lambiam 23:36, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

@Lambiam so DNA repair won't stop these deleterious traits to get expressed? HarryOrange (talk) 14:11, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

No, this is not an issue of damage to the DNA. The genes involved are faithfully reproduced and passed on from generation to generation.  --Lambiam 15:53, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Or stronger e.g. "...we found that genes specifically duplicated in the Greenland shark form a functionally connected network enriched for DNA repair function", and those guys live for centuries and have much more DNA than us. Sean.hoyland (talk) 15:21, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

@Lambiam If not due to DNA damage, why do babies from inbreeding appear like DNA-damaged species? HarryOrange (talk) 17:29, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Inbred offspring of species that normally outcross may show abnormalities because they are more likely than outcrossed offspring to be homozygous for recessive alleles that are deleterious. In individuals that are heterozygous at these loci, the recessive alleles will not be expressed (because the other wild-type dominant allele is sufficient to do their job adequately). See our article on inbreeding depression. JMCHutchinson (talk) 19:26, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Larvae going south

In a novel I've just finished (The Chemistry of Death by Simon Beckett) he writes:

• [The larvae] leave the body in an orderly fashion, following each other in a neat procession that always heads south. South-east or south-west sometimes, but never north. No-one knows why.

The author has done considerable international research on the science of forensic identification of decayed bodies and I assume his details can be trusted.

I've looked online for any verification of this surprising statement, but found only this, which seems to debunk it.

Is there any truth to this? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:38, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Can't speak to its truth, but . . .

• Does Beckett state this in his own auctorial voice (i.e. as an omniscient narrator)? If so, he might be genuinely mistaken.
• The book was published nearly 20 years ago, what was the accepted wisdom then?
• What specific species (if any) is the book describing? – your linked Quora discussion refers only to "maggots" (which can be of numerous species and are a kind of larva, but there are many others, including for example Processionary caterpillars).
• Alternatively, if the statement is made by a character in the book, is that character meant to be infallible, or is he portrayed as less than omniscient, or an 'unreliable narrator'?

Regarding the statement, in the Northern hemisphere the arc of South-east to South-west is predominently where the Sun is found well above the horizon, the North never, so the larvae involved might simply be seeking maximum warmth or light. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 02:18, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

This appears in the very first paragraph of Chapter I, which starts out:

• A human body starts to decompose four minutes after death. Once the encapsulation of life, it now undergoes its final metamorphoses. It begins to digest itself. Cells dissolve from the inside out. Tissue turns to liquid, then to gas. No longer animate, the body becomes an immovable feast for other organisms. Bacteria first, then insects. Flies. Eggs are laid, then hatched. The larvae feed on the nutrient-rich broth, and then migrate. They leave the body in an orderly fashion ... (then the quote above completes the paragraph).

It's not until para 2 that he starts talking about any human characters, and not until para 4 that he invokes the first person.

That's as much as I know. But I find it hard to believe he'd just make up a detail and put it in such a prominent place if it could so easily be debunked if it were not true. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 02:39, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I wonder how they would measure the migratory path of maggots within a sealed coffin. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:51, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

The context of the novel is about finding decaying corpses that have been dumped in a forest. No coffins involved. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:08, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Baseball Bugs, see also body farm research facilities. Alansplodge (talk) 13:44, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Could it be that the larvae are setting off in search of another corpse? The prevailing wind in the UK is from the south-west, so by heading into the wind they won't be distracted by the frangrance of the one they've just left. Shantavira|^{feed me} 09:30, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

If you can, have a look at 'Heinrich, Bernd. “Coordinated Mass Movements of Blow Fly Larvae (Diptera: Calliphoridae).” Northeastern Naturalist, vol. 20, no. 4, 2013, pp. N23–27. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43288173.' Here are some extracts

• On the fourth day, after a cooling night with dew on the grass, a stream of tens of thousands of larvae exited from beneath the carcass within 1 h after sunrise, and proceeded in a single 1-2-cm-wide column directly toward the rising sun...
• However, in this case, the larvae left at night, within 1 h after a cloudburst (at 21 :00 hours). But, unlike before, this nocturnal larval exodus in the rain was diffuse; thousands of larvae spread out in virtually all directions over an 8 m2area. Apparently, the sudden moisture had cued and facilitated the mass exodus, but the absence of sun had prevented a unidirectional, en masse movement.
• However, on the following morning as the sun was starting to illuminate the carcass on the dewy grass, masses of larvae gathered at the east end of the carcass at 07:00 hours. In one half hour later, they started streaming in a column directly (within one degree) toward the rising sun, and the carcass was then nearly vacated.

It goes on. Maggot migration appears to be a bit more complicated than the novel suggests. Sean.hoyland (talk) 09:39, 20 December 2024 (UTC) I suppose you could try to address it from the other direction and look at the technology your average maggot has access to in terms of light detection, heat detection, olfactory systems, orientation in magnetic fields (like many arthropods) etc. They presumably have quite a lot of tools. Sean.hoyland (talk) 10:13, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

If orderly migrating maggots tend to move towards the sun, they should display a northward tendency in Oztralia.  --Lambiam 10:31, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Maybe, but the novel is set in England.

I must say, as soon as I read the quoted para for the first time, my immediate thought was that it might have something to do with the magnetic field of the earth. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 10:42, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Prime suspect might be the Bolwig organ, the photoreceptor cluster many fly larvae have. Sean.hoyland (talk) 10:49, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Obviously, Jack, you need to create a corpse, place it in a nearby forest, and carefully observe which way the maggots go. For Science! And Literary Criticism! {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 21:01, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

December 20

Winter solstice and time of sunrise?

How is it that despite December 21st supposedly being the shortest day of the year, sunrise here happens later and later until December 26 and only on January 05 starts to turn around to occur earlier and earlier. On December 25 it takes place at about 08:44, between December 26 and January 04 it takes place at about 08:45, and on January 05 it takes place again at about 08:44. (Google rounds out the seconds). Is it Google's fault? Is it everywhere the same? Confused in Brussels, Belgium. 178.51.16.158 (talk) 12:06, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

The pertinent article is Analemma, start with the section Earliest and latest sunrise and sunset. The details are not that simple to understand, but it's basically due to the ellipticity of Earth's orbit and its axial tilt. --Wrongfilter (talk) 12:22, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Also note that sunset begins to be later on 22 December so that the time between sunrise and sunset is a few seconds longer than on 21 December (3 seconds longer on 22/12/24 in Brussels according to this). Alansplodge (talk) 13:33, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Also see Equation of time#Major components. The obliquity of the ecliptic (that is, the Earth's axial tilt) is the main component and hardest to understand. But the idea is that the time when the Sun is exactly south (that is, the true noon) moves some minutes back and forth throughout the year and it moves quite rapidly to later times in late December. PiusImpavidus (talk) 19:05, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

By the way is there a chart somewhere of the date of earliest/latest sunrise/sunset by latitude? —Tamfang (talk) 21:45, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Discussed at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2024 August 9#Total daytime per latitude. 2A02:C7C:F33B:4100:909B:C596:FD17:F530 (talk) 13:42, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Three unit questions

1. Why territorial waters are defined by nautical miles instead of kilometers?
2. Why GDP is usually measured in US dollars rather than euros? Euro would be better because it is not tied into any country.
3. Are there any laws in United States that are defined by metric units?

--40bus (talk) 23:30, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Question 1

1. There were nautical miles in use before there were kilometers. - Philvoids 00:52, 21 December 2024

Do any people use metric units in marine and air navigation like "The ship is 10 kilometers from the port", "The plane is 10 kilometers from the destination? And is there any European country with metric flight levels? --40bus (talk) 07:22, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Inland shipping (rivers, canals and lakes) in Europe (except the UK) is fully metric. Ships going for example Tilbury – Duisburg may have to switch units along the way. Gliders and ultralight aircraft in Europe often use metric instruments and airport dimensions are also metric (including runway length). Countries are free to define their territorial waters in whatever way they deem fit, so with nautical miles having no legal status in a fully metric country, they may define their territorial waters as extending 22224 metres. PiusImpavidus (talk) 11:23, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Our nautical mile article says: "In 1929 the international nautical mile was defined by the First International Extraordinary Hydrographic Conference in Monaco as exactly 1,852 metres (which is 6,076.12 ft). The United States did not adopt the international nautical mile until 1954. Britain adopted it in 1970..." - Alansplodge 21:53. 21 December 2024

The Wikipaedia article on the Nautical Mile talks about how the term originated, it was originally defined in terms of latitude not as a number of meters 114.75.48.128 (talk) 10:03, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Question 2

2. There were US dollars in use before there were Euros. - Philvoids 00:52, 21 December 2024

The US dollar has been the world's dominant reserve currency for about 75 years. - Cullen328 02:28, 21 December 2024

The euro is tied to multiple specific countries is it not? If you use euros you're just changing from one "dependency" to a "dependency" on the eurozone countries. A statement of the problem or problems intended to be addressed would be useful. Currency values are interconvertible in any case. Economics does sometimes use the "international dollar" for certain things, which is intended to adjust for differences in purchasing power between countries and over time. But since it's not an actual "real" currency it's not something one can easily "visualize" in their heads, which is likely why it's not used more. --Slowking Man (talk) 05:41, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Eurostat, the official source of European Union data, uses euros, not dollars, to measure the economy. See [[2]]?DOR (ex-HK) (talk) 01:27, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

The user doubled-down on the response. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:32, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Now fixed. 89.243.14.91 (talk) 13:50, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Question 3

3.Yes.

The questions all reduce to Why can't millions of people make a change of historically widely accepted units that continue to serve their purpose, and convert to different units that would have no substantive difference, because someone has an opinion. Philvoids (talk) 00:52, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

As the US customary units are actually defined in terms that relate them to metric units, any US law based on measurements is technically defined by metric units.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 01:55, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

As for the metric system in the US, it is standard in scientific, medical, electronics, auto manufacturing and other highly technical industries. By law, all packaged foods and beverages have metric quantities as well as customary quantities. See Metrication in the United States. Cullen328 (talk) 02:28, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

December 24

Unknown species of insect

Am I correct in inferring that this guy is an oriental beetle? I was off-put by the green head at first, but the antennae seem to match. JayCubby 03:00, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

(reference: https://www.genesdigest.com/macro/image.php?imageid=168&apage=0&ipage=1)

It looks like one of the invasive Japanese beetles that happens to like my blackberries in the summer. Modocc (talk) 13:11, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

I would say not necessarily a Japanese beetle, but almost certainly one of the other Scarab beetles, though with 35,000 species that doesn't help a lot. Looking at the infobox illustration in that article, 16. & 17., "Anisoplia segetum" looks very similar, but evidently we either don't have an article or (if our Anisoplia article is a complete list) it's been renamed. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 14:18, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it's not the Japanese beetle for this beetle appears to lack its white-dotted fringe although its condition is deteriorated. Its shape is also more or less more slender; and not as round. Modocc (talk) 15:02, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps it is the shining leaf chafer Strigoderma pimalis. Shown here. Modocc (talk) 16:09, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

That looks like easily the best match I've seen so far, and likely correct. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 17:09, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

December 25

Mass of oscillating neutrino

From the conservation of energy and momentum it follows that a particle that is not subject to external forces must have constancy of mass.

If I am right, this means that the mass of the neutrino cannot change during the neutrino oscillation, although its flavoring may. Is this written down somewhere? Thank you. Hevesli (talk) 19:24, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

Any (flavored) neutrino that is really observed is a superposition of two or three mass eigenstates. This is actually the cause of neutrino oscillations. So, the answer to your question is complicated. Ruslik_Zero 19:40, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

Important note: particle physicists today generally only ever use "mass" to mean "invariant mass" and never anything else: [3]. Like the term says, invariant mass is well, invariant, it never changes ever, no matter what "external forces" may or may not be involved. Being proper particle-icans and following the standard practice in the field, then, the three neutrino masses are constant values. ..."Wait, three?" Yeah sure, turns out neutrinos come in three "flavors" but each flavor is a mixture of the three possible mass "states". As mentioned, due to Quantum Weirdness we aren't able to get these different states "alone by themselves" to measure each by itself, so we only know the differences of the squares of the masses. Yeah welcome to quantum mechanics.

Richard Feynman: "Quantum mechanics describes nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And yet it fully agrees with experiment. So I hope you can accept nature as She is  – absurd." --Slowking Man (talk) 06:06, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

The equation $E^{2}=(pc)^{2}+\left(m_{0}c^{2}\right)^{2}$ uses invariant mass m₀ which is constant if E and p are constant. The traveling neutrino has a varying mass mixture of different flavors with different masses. If a mixture of different masses changes, you would expect the resulting mass to change with it. But somehow this does not happen as the neutrino mass mixture changes. These mixture changes cannot be any changes. The changes must be such that the resulting mass of the traveling neutrino remains constant. My question is whether this is described somewhere. Hevesli (talk) 11:16, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

I freely confess I'm uncertain exactly what's being "asked for" or "gotten at" here. Have you looked at the neutrino oscillation article? From it: That is, the three neutrino states that interact with the charged leptons in weak interactions are each a different superposition of the three (propagating) neutrino states of definite mass. Neutrinos are emitted and absorbed in weak processes in flavor eigenstates[a] but travel as mass eigenstates.[18]

What is it that we're "doing" with the energy–momentum relation here? For the neutrino, we don't have a single value of "mass" to plug in for $m_{0}$, because we can't "see" the individual mass eigenstates, only some linear combination of them. What you want for describing neutrino interactions is quantum field theory, which is special relativity + QM. (Remember, relativity is a "classical" theory, which presumes everything always has single well-defined values of everything. Which isn't true in quantum-world.) --Slowking Man (talk) 18:41, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Not all potential evolutions of a linear combination of unequal values produce constant results. Constancy can only be guaranteed by a constraint on the evolutions. Does the fact that this constraint is satisfied in the case of neutrino oscillation follow from the mathematical formulation of the Standard Model, or does this formulation allow evolutions of the mass mixture for which the combination is not constant? If the unequal values are unknown, I have no idea of how such a constraint might be formulated. I think the OP is asking whether this constraint is described somewhere.  --Lambiam 00:51, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

December 27

Low-intensity exercise

If you exercise at a low intensity for an extended period of time, does the runner's high still occur if you do it for long enough? Or does it only occur above a certain threshold intensity of exercise? 2601:646:8082:BA0:CDFF:17F5:371:402F (talk) 20:13, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Hows about you try it and report back? :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:31, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

I wanted to try it just today, but I had to exchange the under-desk elliptical trainer I got for Christmas for a different model with more inclined treadles because with the one I got, my knees would hit the desk at the top of every cycle. Anyway, I was hoping someone else tried it first (preferably as part of a formal scientific study) so I would know if I could control whether I got a runner's high from exercise or not? 2601:646:8082:BA0:9052:E6AF:23C7:7CAF (talk) 03:09, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Also, sorry for adding to my own question, but here's a related one: is it known whether the length of a person's dopamine receptor D4 (which is inversely correlated with its sensitivity) influences whether said person gets a runner's high from exercise (and especially from low-intensity exercise)? 2601:646:8082:BA0:9052:E6AF:23C7:7CAF (talk) 03:14, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

fastidious organism vs auxotroph

Hi,

What is the difference between an auxotroph and a fastidious organism? It seems to me the second one would have more requirements than the first one, but the limit between the two definitions is rather unclear to me.

Thank you 212.195.231.13 (talk) 23:17, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm not 100% sure, but it seems to me that an auxotroph is a specific type of a fastidious organism. 2601:646:8082:BA0:9052:E6AF:23C7:7CAF (talk) 03:02, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Symbiosis aside, it would seem that most auxotrophs would be fastidious organisms, but there could be many more fastidious organisms that aren't auxotrophs. Auxotrophs specifically can't produce organic compounds on their own. There are a LOT of organisms that rely on the availability of non-organic nutrients, such as specific elements/minerals. For instance, vertebrates require access to calcium. Calcium is an element; our inability to produce it does not make us auxotrophs.

But perhaps symbiosis would allow an organism to be an auxotroph without being a fastidious organism? For instance, mammals tend to have bacteria in our guts that can digest nutrients that our bodies can't on their own. Perhaps some of those bacteria also assemble certain nutrients that our bodies can't? -- Avocado (talk) 14:27, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

December 28

Paper with wrong enantiomer in a figure

In the following reference:

Quack, Martin; Seyfang, Georg; Wichmann, Gunther (2022). "Perspectives on parity violation in chiral molecules: theory, spectroscopic experiment and biomolecular homochirality". Chemical Science. 13 (36): 10598–10643. doi:10.1039/d2sc01323a. PMID 36320700.

it is stated in the caption of Fig. 8 that S–bromochlorofluoromethane is predicted to be lower in energy due to parity violation, but in the figure the wrong enantiomer is shown on this side. Which enantiomer is more stable, according to the original sources for this data? –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 08:18, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Where can I find data on the circulation and citation rates of these journals?

Hello everyone, To write an article about a scientist, you need to know, where can I find data on circulation and citation rates of journals from this list? Vyacheslav84 (talk) 09:58, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

So-called “Hydrogen water”

I saw an ad promoting a device which presumable splits water into hydrogen and oxygen and infuses water with extra hydrogen, to a claimed surplus of perhaps 5 ppm, which doesn’t seem like much. I found a review article which looked at several dozen related studies that found benefits:https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10816294/ .

I’ve noticed that carbon dioxide or chlorine (chloramine?) dissolved in water work their way out pretty easily, so I wonder if dissolved hydrogen could similarly exit hydrogen enriched water and be burped or farted out, rather than entering the blood stream and having health benefits. is it more than the latest snake oil? Edison (talk) 23:01, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes, the dissolved hydrogen will exit the water just as quickly (even faster, because of its low molecular mass and complete lack of polarity or capability for ionic dissociation), and even if it does enter the bloodstream, it will likewise get back out in short order before it can actually do anything (which, BTW, is why deep-sea divers use it in their breathing mixes -- because it gets out of the bloodstream so much faster and therefore doesn't build up and form bubbles like nitrogen does) -- so, I don't think it will do much! 2601:646:8082:BA0:209E:CE95:DB32:DD64 (talk) 01:50, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

It's conceivable it might take out the chloramine, I guess. I don't think there's very much of it, but it tastes awful, which is why I add a tiny bit of vitamin C when I drink tap water. It seems to take very little. Of course it's hard to tell whether it's just being masked by the taste of the vitamin C. --Trovatore (talk) 02:12, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

If you just want to split water into hydrogen and oxygen all you need is a battery and two bits of wire. You don't say where you saw this ad but if it was on a socia media site forget it. Shantavira|^{feed me} 11:47, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

If this so-called hydrogen water was emitting hydrogen bubbles, would it be possible to set it afire? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:03, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

We once had an article on this topic, but see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hydrogen water. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:27, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

I don't know if it is rubbish or not but a quick look on the web indicates to me it is notable enough for Wikipedia. I didn't see anything indicating it definitely did anything useful so such an article should definitely have caveats. I haven't seen any expression of a potential worry either so it isn't like we'd be saying bleach is a good medicine for covid. NadVolum (talk) 23:07, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

International Journal of Molecular Sciences does not sound of exceptionally high quality. DMacks (talk) 01:05, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

December 29

Potential energy vs. kinetic energy. Why not also "potential velocity" vs. "kinetic velocity"? E.g. in the following case:

In a harmonic oscillator, reaching the highest point involves - both a minimal kinetic energy - along with a maximal potential energy, whereas reaching the lowest point involves - both a maximal kinetic energy - along with a minimal potential energy. Thus the mechanical energy becomes the sum of kinetic energy + potential energy, and is a conserved quantity.

So I wonder if it's reasonable to define also "potential velocity" vs. "kinetic velocity", and claim that in a harmonic oscillator, reaching the highest point involves - both a minimal "kinetic velocity" (i.e. involves what we usually call a rest) - along with a maximal "potential velocity", whereas reaching the lowest point involves - both a maximal "kinetic velocity" (i.e. involves what we usually call the actual velocity) - along with a minimal "potential velocity". Thus we can also define "mechanical velocity" as the sum of "kinetic velocity" + "potential velocity", and claim that the mechanical velocity is a conserved quantity - at least as far as a harmonic oscillator is concerned.

Reasonable?

Note that I could also ask an analogous question - as to the concept of "potential momentum", but this term is already used in the theory of hidden momentum for another meaning, so for the time being I'm focusing on velocity.

HOTmag (talk) 12:26, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

'kinetic velocity' is just 'velocity'. 'potential velocity' has no meaning. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:56, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Per my suggestion, the ratio between distance and time is not called "velocity" but rather "kinetic velocity".

Further, per my suggestion, if you don't indicate whether the "velocity" you're talking about is a "kinetic velocity" or a "potential velocity" or a "mechanical velocity", the very concept of "velocity" alone has no meaning!

On the other hand, "potential velocity" is defined as the difference between the "mechanical velocity" and the "kinetic velocity"! Just as, this is the case if we replace "velocity" by "energy". For more details, see the example above, about the harmonic oscillator. HOTmag (talk) 15:14, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

You could define the potential velocity of a body at a particular height as the velocity it would hit the ground at if dropped from that height. But the sum of the potential and kinetic velocities would not be conserved; rather $v_{\mathrm {tot} }={\sqrt {v_{p}^{2}+v_{k}^{2}}}$ would be constant. catslash (talk) 18:54, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. HOTmag (talk) 20:07, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

'Potential velocity' has no meaning. You seem to be arguing that in a system where energy is conserved, but is transforming between kinetic and potential energy, (You might also want to compare this to conservation of momentum.) then you can express that instead through a new conservation law based on velocity. But this doesn't work. There's no relation between velocity and potential energy.

In a harmonic oscillator, the potential energy is typically coming from some central restoring force with a relationship to position, nothing at all to do with velocity. Where some axiomatic external rule (such as Hooke's Law applying, because the system is a mass on a spring) happens to relate the position and velocity through a suitable relation, then the system will then (and only then) behave as a harmonic oscillator. But a different system (swap the spring for a dashpot) doesn't have this, thus won't oscillate. Andy Dingley (talk) 00:00, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Let me quote a sentence from my original post: Thus we can also...claim that the mechanical velocity is a conserved quantity - at least as far as a harmonic oscillator is concerned.

What's wrong in this quotation? HOTmag (talk) 07:52, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

It is true, not only for harmonic oscillators, provided that you define v_pot = − v_kin.  --Lambiam 09:07, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

• You have defined some arbitrary values for new 'velocities', where their only definition is that they then demonstrate some new conservation law. Which is really the conservation of energy, but you're refusing to use that term for some reason.

As Catslash pointed out, the conserved quantity here is proportional to the square of velocity, so your conservation equation has to include that. It's simply wrong that any linear function of velocity would be conserved here. Not merely we can't prove that, but we can prove (the sum of the squares diverges from the sum) that it's actually contradicted. For any definition of 'another velocity' which is a linear function of velocity.

Lambiam's definition isn't a conservation law, it's merely a mathematical identity. The sum of any value and its additive inverse is always zero. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:04, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

It is a law of conservation of sanity. Lacking a definition of potential energy, other than by having been informed that kinetic energy + potential energy is a conserved quantity, there is not much better we can do.  --Lambiam 11:20, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

We have a perfectly viable definition of potential energy. For a pendulum it's based on the change in height of the pendulum bob against gravity. For some other oscillators it would involve the work done against a spring. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:33, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Oops, I mistyped. I meant to write:

"Lacking a definition of potential velocity, other than by having been informed that kinetic velocity + potential velocity is a conserved quantity, there is not much better we can do."

 --Lambiam 23:32, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

December 30

Saltiness comparison

Is there some test one might easily perform in a home test kitchen to compare the saltiness (due to the concentration of Na⁺ cations) of two liquid preparations, without involving biological taste buds?  --Lambiam 09:22, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Put two equally sized drops, one of each liquid, on a warm surface, wait for them to evaporate, and compare how much salt residue each leaves? Not very precise or measurable, but significant differences should be noticeable. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 10:21, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

The principle is sound, but the residue from one drop won't be measurable using kitchen equipment -- better to put equal amounts of each liquid in two warm pans (use enough liquid to cover the bottom of each pan with a thin layer), wait for them to evaporate and then weigh the residue! Or, if you're not afraid of doing some algebra, you could also try an indirect method -- bring both liquids to a boil, measure the temperature of both, and then use the formula for boiling point elevation to calculate the saltiness of each! 2601:646:8082:BA0:BD1B:60D8:96CA:C5B0 (talk) 18:22, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Presumably the liquid preparations are not simple saline solutions, but contain other solutes - or else one could simply use a hydrometer. It is unlikely that Lambian is afraid of doing some algebra. catslash (talk) 18:57, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Assuming the liquid preparations are water-based and don't contain alcohols and/or detergents one can measure their rates of dispersion. Simply add a drop of food dye to each liquid and then time how rapidly droplets of each liquid disperse in distilled water. Materials needed: food dye, eye dropper, distilled water, small clear containers and a timer. Modocc (talk) 21:09, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

The colligative properties of a solution will indicate its molarity, but not identify the solute. Liquid preparations that might be found in a kitchen are likely to contain both salt and sugar. Electrical conductivity is a property that will be greatly affected by the salt but not the sugar (this does not help in distinguishing Na⁺ from K⁺ ions though). catslash (talk) 22:23, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

That's what I'm thinking too -- use an ohmmeter to measure the electrical conductivity of the preparation, and compare to that of solutions with known NaCl concentration (using a calibration curve-type method). 73.162.165.162 (talk) 20:18, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Quantitative urine test-strips for sodium seem to be available. They're probably covering the concentration range of tens to hundreds millimolar. DMacks (talk) 00:58, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, test strips seem more practical in the kitchen setting than an ohmmeter (why not call it a "mhometer"?), for which I'd need to devise a way (or so I think) to keep the terminals apart at a steady distance. Test strips require a colour comparison, but I expect that a significant difference in salinity will result in a perceptible colour difference when one strip is placed across the other. Only experiment can tell whether this expectation will come true. Salinity is usually measured in g/L; for kitchen preparations a ballpark figure is 1 g/L. If I'm not mistaken this corresponds to (1 g/L) / (58.443 g/mol) ≈ 0.017 M = 17 mM. I also see offers for salinity test strips, 0–1000 ppm, for "Science Education".  --Lambiam 11:40, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Test strips surely come with a printed color-chart. But if all you are trying to do is determine which is more salty, then that's even easier than quantifying each separately. Caveat for what you might find for sale: some "salinity" tests are based on the chloride not the sodium, so a complex matrix that has components other than NaCl could fool it. DMacks (talk) 18:44, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

The (uncommon?) terms "relativistic length", and "relativistic time".

1. In Wikipedia, the page relativistic length contraction is automatically redirected to our article length contraction, which actually doesn't mention the term "relativistic length" at all. I wonder if there is an accepted term for the concept of relativistic length.

2. A similar qusestion arises, at to the concept of relativistic time: The page relativistic time dilation, is automatically redirected to our article time dilation, which prefers the abbreviated term "time dilation" (59 times) to the term "relativistic time dilation" (8 times only), and nowhere mentions the term "relativistic time" alone (i.e. without the third word "dilation") - although it does mention the term "proper time" for the shortest time. Further, this article doesn't even mention the term "dilated time" either. It does mention, though, another term: coordinate time, but regardless of time dilation in Special relativity. To sum up, I wonder what's the accepted term used for the dilated time (mainly is Special relativity): Is it "coordinate time"? "Relativistic time"?

HOTmag (talk) 09:32, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Are you reading these things as "contraction of relativistic length" etc.? It is "relativistic contraction of length" and "relativistic dilation of time". --Wrongfilter (talk) 09:37, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

When I wrote: The page relativistic time dilation is automatically redirected to our article time dilation which...nowhere mentions the term "relativistic time" alone (i.e. without the third word "dilation"), I had already guessed that the term "dilation of relativistic time" (i.e, with the word "dilation" preceding the words "relativistic time") existed nowhere (at least in Wikipedia), and that this redirected page actually meant "relativistic dilation of time". The same is true for the redirected page "relativistic length contraction": I had already gussed it didn't mean "contraction of relativistic length", because (as I had already written): the article length contraction...doesn't mention the term "relativistic length" at all.

Anyway, I'm still waiting for an answer to my original question: Are there accepted terms for the concepts, of relativistic length - as opposed to proper length, and of relativistic time - as opposed to proper time? HOTmag (talk) 10:12, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

A term that will be understood in the context of relativistic length contraction is relative length – that is, length relative to an observer.^[4][5][6]  --Lambiam 10:55, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. The middle source uses the term "comparative length", rather than "relative length". I couldn't open the third source. HOTmag (talk) 08:04, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

The text under the graph labelled Comparative length on page 20 of the middle source reads:

Graph of the relative length of a stationary rod on earth, as observed from the reference frame of a traveling rod of 100cm proper length.

A similar use of "relative length" can be seen on the preceding page.  --Lambiam 10:23, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

What did Juan Maldacena say after "Geometry of" in this video?

I was watching this video Brian Greene and Juan Maldacena as they explore a wealth of developments connecting black holes, string theory etc, Juan Maldacena said something right after "Geometry of" Here is the spot: https://www.youtube.com/live/yNNXia9IrZs?si=G7S90UT4C8Bb-OnG&t=4484 What is that? HarryOrange (talk) 20:46, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Schwarzschild solution. --Wrongfilter (talk) 21:05, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, its the Juan Maldacena's accent which made me post here. HarryOrange (talk) 21:18, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

December 31

Brightest spot of a discharge tube

Neon is brighter in the middle.

Xenon is brighter at the edges.

What causes the discharge tubes to have their brightest spots at different positions? Nucleus hydro elemon (talk) 13:12, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

See also the pictures at Gas-filled tube #Gases in use. --CiaPan (talk) 13:26, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

January 1

Two unit questions

1. Is there any metric unit whose ratio is not power of 10, and is divisible by 3? Is there any common use for things like "2⁄3 km", "5⁄12 kg", "3+1⁄6 m"?
2. Is a one-tenth of nautical mile (185.2 m) used in English-speaking countries? Is there a name for it?

--40bus (talk) 10:41, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

1 not that I know of (engineer who has worked with SI for 50 years)

2 not that I know of (yacht's navigator for many years on and off)

Greglocock (talk) 11:35, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

In Finland, kaapelinmitta is 185.2 m. Is there an English equivalent? --40bus (talk) 18:11, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Cable length. --Wrongfilter (talk) 18:26, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Good article. I was wrong Greglocock (talk) 22:26, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

The answer can be found by looking up kaapelinmitta on Wiktionary.  --Lambiam 00:14, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

What is more physiological (for a right-hander) left-hand drive or right-hand drive?

Has anyone determined whether it is better for a right-hander to have the left hand on the steering wheel and the right hand on the gear shift stick, or the other way round? Are there other tests of whether left-hand drive or right-hand drive is physiologically better (for a right-hander at least)? 178.51.7.23 (talk) 12:03, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Supplementary question: I've only driven right-hand-drive vehicles (being in the UK) where the light stalk is on the left of the steering column and the wiper & washer controls are (usually) on the right. On a l-h-drive vehicle, is this usually the same, or reversed? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 12:12, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Modern cars are designed for mass production in RH- and LH-drive versions with a minimum difference of parts. Steering columns with attached controls are therefore unchanged between versions. Philvoids (talk) 12:29, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

In the UK nowadays, are cars still mostly manual transmission, or has automatic become the norm? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:38, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

In the UK, sales of new automatics have just recently overtaken manuals - so probably still more manuals than automatics on the road. catslash (talk) 14:37, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

I've driven different (automatic) left-hand-drive vehicles with the light stalk on each side, but left side has been more common. Perhaps because the right hand is more likely to be busy with the gear shift? (Even in the US, where automatic has been heavily dominant since before I learned to drive.) -- Avocado (talk) 17:32, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

It's better for a right-hander to have both hands on the steering wheel regardless of where the gear lever is. See Rule 160. I suspect the same goes for a left-hander. Bazza 7 (talk) 14:39, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

I suppose that the question is whether right-handers have an easier time operating the gear stick when changing gears in manual-transmission cars designed for left-hand traffic, with the steering wheel on the right (like in the UK) or right-hand traffic, with the steering wheel on the left (like in most of continental Europe). Obviously, drivers will use their hand at the side where the gear stick is, so if it is in the middle and the driver, behind the wheel, sits in the right front seat, they'll use their left hand, regardless of their handedness. But this may be more awkward for a rightie. Or not.

--Lambiam 16:30, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

In my personal experience (more than 10 years driving on each side of the road, in all four combinations of car handedness and road handedness) the question which hand to use for shifting gears is fairly insignificant. Switching from one type of car to the other is a bit awkward though. —Kusma (talk) 18:33, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Distinguishing a picture of a sunset from the picture of a sunrise?

Is there a way (if you don't know which way is west and which way is east in a particular location) to distinguish a picture of a sunset from the picture of a sunrise? 178.51.7.23 (talk) 12:08, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Generally, no, but there are a few tricks that sometimes work. In dry sunny weather, there's more dust in the air at sunset (due to thermals) than at sunrise, making the sky around the sun redder at sunset. But in moist weather, mist has the same effect at sunrise. If the picture is good enough to see sunspots, comparing the distribution of sunspots to the known distribution of that day (this is routinely monitored) tells you where the North Pole of the sun is. At sunset, the North Pole points somewhat to the right; at sunrise, to the left. If you see any cumulus or cumulonimbus clouds in the picture, it was a sunset, as such clouds form during the day and disappear around sunset, but absence of such clouds doesn't mean the picture was taken at sunrise. A very large cumulonimbus may survive the night. Cirrus aviaticus clouds are often very large, expanding into cirrostratus, in the evening, but are much smaller at dawn as there's more air traffic during the day than at night, making the upper troposphere more moist towards the end of the day. Cirrostratus also contributes to red sunsets and (to lesser extend, as there's only natural cirrostratus) red sunrises. Dew, rime, flowers and flocks of birds may also give an indication. And of course human activity: the beach is busier at sunset than at sunrise. PiusImpavidus (talk) 13:41, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

December 19

Who is the following unknown?

When asked "WHO IS YOUR X?" (X still being unknown to me but is known to the respondents), here are the answers I get:

A answers: "A"

B answers: "C"

C answers: "C"

D answers: "F"

E answers: "F"

F answers: "F"

To sum up, the special phenomenon here is that, everybody has their own X (usually), and if any respondent points at another respondent as the first respondent's X, then the other respondent must point at themself as their X.

I wonder who the unknown X may be, when I only know that X is a natural example from everyday life. I thought about a couple of examples, but none of them are satisfactory, as follows:

X is the leader of one's political party, or X is one's mayor, and the like, but all of these examples attribute some kind of leadership or superiority to X, whereas I'm not interested in this kind of solution - involving any superiority of X.

Here is a second solution I thought about: X is the first (or last) person born in the year/month the respondent was born, and the like. But this solution involves some kind of order (in which there is a "first person" and a "last person"), whereas I'm not interested in this kind of solution - involving any order.

Btw, I've published this question also at the Miscellaneous desk, because this question is about everyday life, but now I decide to publish this question also here, because it's indirectly related to a well known topic in Math. 79.177.151.182 (talk) 13:27, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Head of household comes to mind as a fairly natural one. The colours then correspond to different households which can be just one person. One objection is that "head of household" is a fairy traditional concept. With marriage equality now being the norm it's perhaps outdated. --2A04:4A43:909F:F9FF:397E:BBF9:E80B:CB36 (talk) 15:11, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

I have already referred to this kind of solution, in the example of "my mayor", see above why this solution is not satisfactory. 79.177.151.182 (talk) 15:31, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

The question has been resolved at the Miscellaneous reference desk.

Resolved

79.177.151.182 (talk) 15:48, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

X may well be 'the oldest living person of your ancestry'. --CiaPan (talk) 20:46, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Resolved or not, let's try to analyze this mathematically. Given is some set $S$ and some function $f:S\to S.$ For the example, $S=\{{\mathsf {A}},{\mathsf {B}},{\mathsf {C}},{\mathsf {D}},{\mathsf {E}},{\mathsf {F}}\},$ with $f({\mathsf {A}})={\mathsf {A}},$ $f({\mathsf {B}})=f({\mathsf {C}})={\mathsf {C}},$ $f({\mathsf {D}})=f({\mathsf {E}})=f({\mathsf {F}})={\mathsf {F}}.$

Knowing that "everybody has their own X (usually)", we can normalize the unusual situation that function $f$ might not be total in two ways. The first is to restrict the set $S$ to the domain of $f,$ that is, the set of elements on which $f$ is defined. This is possible because of the condition that $f(u)=v$ implies $f(v)=v,$ so this does not introduce an undue limitation of the range of $f.$ The second approach is to postulate that $f(u)=u$ whenever $f(u)$ might otherwise be undefined. Which of these two approaches is chosen makes no essential difference.

Let $T=f(S)$ be the range of $f$, given by:

$T=\{v\in S:(\exists u\in S:f(u)=v)\}.$

Clearly, if $f(v)=v,$ we have $v\in T.$ We know, conversely, that $v\in T$ implies $f(v)=v.$

Let us also consider the inverse image of $f$, given by:

$f^{-1}(v)=\{u\in S:f(u)=v\}.$

Suppose that $f^{-1}(v)\neq \emptyset .$ This means that there exists some $u\in f^{-1}(v),$ which in turns means that $f(u)=v.$ But then we know that $f(v)=v.$ Combining this, we have,

$f(v)=v\Leftrightarrow v\in T\Leftrightarrow f^{-1}(v)\neq \emptyset .$

The inverse-image function restricted to $T,$ to which we assign the typing

$f^{-1}:T\to \mathbb {P} (S),$

now induces a partitioning of $S$ into non-empty, mutually disjoint subsets, which means they are the classes of an equivalence relation. Each class has its own unique representative, which is the single element of the class that is also a member of $T$. The equivalence relation can be expressed formally by

$u\sim v\Leftrightarrow f(u)=f(v),$

and the representatives are the fixed points of $f.$

Applying this to the original example, $T=\{{\mathsf {A}},{\mathsf {C}},{\mathsf {F}}\},$ and the equivalence classes are:

• $\{{\mathsf {A}}\},$ with representative ${\mathsf {A}},$
• $\{{\mathsf {B}},{\mathsf {C}}\},$ with representative ${\mathsf {C}},$ and
• $\{{\mathsf {D}},{\mathsf {E}},{\mathsf {F}}\},$ with representative ${\mathsf {F}}.$

Conversely, any partitioning of a set defines an equivalence relation; together with the selection of a representative for each equivalence class, this gives an instance of the situation defined in the question.  --Lambiam 20:47, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

FWIW, the number of such objects on a set of size n is given by OEIS: A000248, and that page has a number of other combinatorial interpretations. If you ignore the selection of a representative for each class, you get the Bell numbers. --RDBury (talk) 00:35, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

December 20

Give a base b and two base b digits x and z, must there be a base b digits y such that the 3-digit number xyz in base b is prime?

Give a base b and two base b digits x and z (x is not 0, z is coprime to b), must there be a base b digits y such that the 3-digit number xyz in base b is prime? 1.165.207.39 (talk) 02:10, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

In base 5, $3Y1_{5}=76+5Y$ is composite for all base-5 Y. GalacticShoe (talk) 03:39, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

$3Y1_{7}$ also offers a counterexample. While there are many counterexamples for most odd bases, I did not find any for even bases.  --Lambiam 09:58, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

December 23

Is it possible to make Twisted Edwards curve birationally equivalent to twisted weirestrass curves ?

Is there an equation fo converting a twisted Edwards curve into a tiwsted weierstrass form ? 2A01:E0A:401:A7C0:6D06:298B:1495:F479 (talk) 04:12, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

According to Montgomery curve § Equivalence with twisted Edwards curves, every twisted Edwards curve is birationally equivalent to a Montgomery curve, while Montgomery curve § Equivalence with Weierstrass curves gives a way to transform a Montgomery curve to an elliptic curve in Weierstrass form. I don't see a definition of "twisted Weierstrass", so I don't know if you can give an extra twist in the process. Perhaps this paper, "Efficient Pairing Computation on Twisted Weierstrass Curves" provides the answer; its abstract promises: "In this paper, we construct the twists of twisted Edwards curves in Weierstrass form."  --Lambiam 10:35, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

December 24

How did the Romans do engineering calculations?

The Romans did some impressive engineering. Engineers today use a lot of mathematical calculations when designing stuff. Calculations using Roman numerals strike me as being close to impossible. What did the Romans do? HiLo48 (talk) 05:50, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

The kind of engineering calculations that might have been relevant would mostly have been about statics – specifically the equilibrium of forces acting on a construction, and the ability of the design to withstand these forces, given its dimensions and the mechanical properties of the materials used in the construction, such as density, modulus of elasticity, shear modulus, Young modulus, fracture strength and ultimate tensile strength. In Roman times, only the simplest aspects of all this were understood mathematically, namely the statics of a construction in which all forces work in the same plane, without torque, and the components are perfectly rigid. The notion of assigning a numerical magnitude to these moduli and strengths did not exist, which anyway did not correspond to precisely defined, well-understood concepts. Therefore, engineering was not a science but an art, mainly based on experience in combination with testing on physical models. Any calculations would mostly have been for the amounts and dimensions of construction materials (and the cost thereof), requiring a relatively small number of additions and multiplications.  --Lambiam 19:03, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Calculating with Roman Numerals might seem impossible, but in some ways it's simpler than our positional system; there are only so many symbols commonly used, and only so many ways to add and multiply them. Once you know all those ways you efficiently can do calculations with them, up to the limits imposed by the system.

And for a lot of things they relied on experience. Romans knew how to build circular arches, but rather than do calculations to build larger arches, or ones with more efficient shapes they used many small circular ones which they knew worked, stacked side by side and sometimes on top of each other. See e.g. any Roman aqueduct or the Colosseum. For materials they probably produce them on site or close by as they're needed.--2A04:4A43:909F:F9FF:FC7B:F1E8:19D6:124C (talk) 20:12, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

To add to the above, it wasn't really the Romans that were great innovators in science, engineering, etc.. I think more innovation and discovery took place in Ancient Greece and Ancient Egypt. Certainly Greece as we have a record of that. Egypt it's more that they were building on such a monumental scale, as scale no-one came close to repeating until very recently.

Romans were military geniuses. They conquered Greece, and Egypt, and Carthage, and Gaul, and Britannia, and everywhere in between. They then built forts, towns, cities and infrastructure throughout their empire. They built so much so widely that a lot of it still stands. But individually a lot of it isn't technically impressive; instead it's using a few simple patterns over and over again.--2A04:4A43:909F:F9FF:FC7B:F1E8:19D6:124C (talk) 12:09, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

See Roman abacus. catslash (talk) 22:03, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

It has to be said that in Roman times calculations for architecture were mostly graphical, geometrical, mechanical, rather than numeric. In fact, from the perspective of an ancient architect, it would make little sense translating geometrical figures into numbers, making numeric calculations, then translating them into geometrical figures again. Numerals become widely used tools only later, e.g. with the invention of Analytic Geometry (by Descartes), and with logarithms (Napier); and all these great mathematical innovations happened to be so useful also thanks to the previous invention of the printing press by Gutenberg --it's easier to transmit information by numbers than by geometric constructions. One may even argue that the invention of the printing press itself was the main reason to seek for an adequate efficient notation for real numbers (achieved by Stevinus). pma 21:22, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

This is a great answer! Tito Omburo (talk) 21:38, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Architectural calculations, mentioned by Vitruvius, are not what I think of as engineering calculations. The former kind is about form. The latter kind should provide answers questions about structural behaviour, like, "Will these walls be able to withstand the outward force of the dome?" Can such questions be addressed with non-numerical calculations?  --Lambiam 23:40, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Are these sequences mod any natural number n periodic?

The period of Fibonacci number mod n is the Pisano period of n, but are these sequences mod any natural number n also periodic like Fibonacci number mod n?

1. Lucas number
2. Pell number
3. Tribonacci number
4. Tetranacci number
5. Newman–Shanks–Williams number
6. Padovan sequence
7. Perrin number
8. Narayana sequence
9. Motzkin number
10. Bell number
11. Fubini number
12. Euler zigzag number
13. Partition number OEIS: A000041
14. Distinct partition number OEIS: A000009

42.76.153.22 (talk) 06:06, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

For 1. through 4., see Pisano period#Generalizations. Although 5. through 8. are not explicitly listed, I'm pretty sure the same argument applies for their periodicity as well. GalacticShoe (talk) 07:05, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

For 13, I'm not sure, but I think the partition function is not periodic modulo any nontrivial number, to the point that the few congruences that are satisfied by the function are also very notable, e.g. Ramanujan's congruences. GalacticShoe (talk) 07:23, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

It's possible that a sequences is eventually periodic but not periodic from the start, for example powers of 2 are periodic for any odd n, but for n=2 the sequence is 1, 0, 0, ..., which is only periodic starting with the second entry. In other words a sequence can be become periodic without being pure periodic. A finiteness argument shows that 1-8 are at least eventually periodic, but I don't think it works for the rest. (Pollard's rho algorithm uses this finiteness argument as well.) It says in the article that Bell numbers are periodic mod n for any prime n, but the status for composite n is unclear, at least from the article. Btw, Catalan numbers not on the list?. --RDBury (talk) 08:08, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

If only the periodicity of Bell numbers modulo prime powers were known, then periodicity for all modulos would immediately result from the Chinese remainder theorem. GalacticShoe (talk) 01:29, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

PS. 1-8 are pure periodic. In general, if the recurrence can be written in the form F(k) = (some polynomial in F(k-1), F(k-2), ... F(k-d+1) ) ± F(k-d), then F is pure periodic. The reason is that you can solve for F(k-d) and carry out the recursion backwards starting from where the sequence becomes periodic. Since the previous entries are uniquely determined they must follow the same periodic pattern as the rest of the sequence. If the coefficient of F(k-d) is not ±1 then this argument fails and the sequence can be pre-periodic but not pure periodic, at least when n is not relatively prime to the coefficient. --RDBury (talk) 18:12, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Ah, what was tripping me up was showing pure periodicity, recursing backwards completely slipped my mind. Thanks for the writeup! GalacticShoe (talk) 18:31, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

good questions. What about TREE(n) mod k, for arbitrary fixed k?Rich (talk) 23:03, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Link: TREE function. There are a lot of sequences like this where exact values aren't known, Ramsey numbers are another example. It helps if there is a relatively simple recursion defining the sequence. --RDBury (talk) 11:50, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

For 9. Motzkin numbers are not periodic mod 2. Motzkin numbers mod 2 are OEIS:A039963, which is OEIS:A035263 with each term repeated (i.e. $0\rightarrow 00,1\rightarrow 11$.) OEIS:A035263 in turn is the sequence that results when one starts with the string $1$ and successively maps $0\rightarrow 11,1\rightarrow 10$ (e.g. $110\rightarrow 101011$.) It is clear that if OEIS:A035263 were periodic with period $n$, then the periodic string $X$ of length $n$ would need to map to string $XX$, but this is impossible as the last character of $X$ is always the opposite of the last character of the map applied to $X$. Thus OEIS:A035263 is nonperiodic, and neither is OEIS:A039963. GalacticShoe (talk) 01:08, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

This paper (linked from OEIS) goes into more detail on Motzkin numbers. I gather the sequence might be called quasi-periodic, but I can't find an article that matches this situation exactly. A003849 is in the same vein. --RDBury (talk) 16:59, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

For 11., the article seems to suggest that Fubini numbers are eventually periodic modulo any prime power. I'm pretty sure this means that they the numbers eventually periodic mod any number $n$, since the lcm of the eventual periods modulo all prime power divisors of $n$ should correspond to the eventual period modulo $n$ itself, with the remainders being obtainable through the Chinese remainder theorem. However, the wording also seems to suggest that periodicity modulo arbitrary $n$ is still conjectural, so I'm not sure. GalacticShoe (talk) 02:44, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

You have answered all questions except 12 and 14, and 9 and 13 are the only two sequences which are not periodic mod n (except trivial n=1), 12 (Euler zigzag numbers) is (sequence A000111 in the OEIS), which seems to be periodic mod n like 10 (Bell numbers) (sequence A000110 in the OEIS) and 11 (Fubini numbers) (sequence A000670 in the OEIS), but all of these three sequences need prove, besides, 14 (Distinct partition numbers) (sequence A000009 in the OEIS) seems to be like 13 (Partition numbers) (sequence A000041 in the OEIS), i.e. not periodic mod n. 1.165.199.71 (talk) 02:27, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

December 31

Generating a point on the Y axis from regular pentagon with point on X axis

For a $K$ consisting of points in R^2, define the function B such that $B(K)$ as the Union of $K$ and all points which can be produced in the following way. For each set of points A, B, C, & D from $K$ all different so that no three of A, B, C & D are co-linear. E is the point (if it exists) where ABE are colinear and CDE are co-linear.

If $K_{0}$ = the vertices of a regular Pentagon centered at 0,0 with one vertex at (1,0), does there exist N such that $B^{N}(K_{0})$ includes any point of the form (0, y)? (extending the question to any N-gon, with N odd) Naraht (talk) 05:16, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

I think you meant to write $B^{N}(K_{0}).$  --Lambiam 07:55, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Changed to use the Math.Naraht (talk) 14:37, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm not 100% sure I understand the problem, but try this: Label the vertices of the original pentagon, starting with (1, 0), as A, B, C, D, E. You can construct a second point on the x-axis as the intersection of BD and CE; call this A'. Similarly construct B', C', D', E', to get another, smaller, regular pentagon centered at the origin and with the opposite orientation from the the original pentagon. All the lines AA', BB', CC', DD', EE' intersect at the origin, so you can construct (0, 0) as the intersection of any pair of these lines. The question didn't say y could not be 0, so the answer is yes, with N=2.

There is some theory developed on "straightedge only construction", in particular the Poncelet–Steiner theorem, which states any construction possible with a compass and straightedge can be constructed with a straightedge alone if you are given a single circle with its center. In this case you're given a finite set of points instead of a circle, and I don't know if there is much theory developed for that. --RDBury (talk) 13:12, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Here is an easy way to describe the construction of pentagon A'B'C'D'E'. The diagonals of pentagon ABCDE form a pentagram. The smaller pentagon is obtained by removing the five pointy protrusions of this pentagram.  --Lambiam 16:53, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

January 1

What is the first number not contained in M136279841?

See (sequence A268068 in the OEIS), the first number not contained in M74207281 is 1000003, but what is What is the first number not contained in M136279841 (the currently largest known prime)? 61.224.131.231 (talk) 03:34, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

The corresponding sequence (11, 3, 8, 7, 6, 10, 4, 9, 1, 5, 25, 31, 39, ...) is not in OEIS. Finding the answer to your question requires an inordinate amount of computing power. The decimal expansion of this Mersenne prime has some 41 million digits, all of which need to be computed. If this is to be done in a reasonable amount of time, the computation will need the random access storage of at least some 22 million digits.  --Lambiam 10:10, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm not seeing that this question requires an inordinate amount of computing power to answer. 41 million characters is not a very large set of data. Almost all modern computers have several gigabytes of memory, so 41 million characters will easily fit in memory. I took the digits of M136279841 from https://www.mersenne.org/primes/digits/M136279841.zip and searched them myself, which took a few minutes on a consumer grade PC. If I have not made a mistake, the first number that does not appear is 1000030. The next few numbers that do not appear are 1000073, 1000107, 1000143, 1000156, 1000219, 1000232, 1000236, 1000329, 1000393, 1000431, 1000458, 1000489, 1000511, 1000514, 1000520, 1000529, etc. CodeTalker (talk) 03:59, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

December 21

Everything You Can Do, We Can Do Meta: source?

I once read in a George Will article (or it might have been in one of his short columns) that the University of Chicago or one of its departments used "Everything You Can Do, We Can Do Meta" as a motto, but it turned out this was completely (if unintentionally, at least on Will's part) made up. Does anyone else remember George Will making that claim? Regardless, has anyone any idea how George Will may have mis-heard or mis-remembered it? (I could never believe that he intentionally made it up.) Anyway, does anyone know the source of the phrase, or at least an earliest source. (Obviously it may have occurred to several people independently.) The earliest I've found on Google is a 2007 article in the MIT Technology Review. Anything earlier? 178.51.16.158 (talk) 04:09, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

[7] describes it as "John Bell’s motto" and uses the reference J. Bell, ‘Legal Theory in Legal Education – “Everything you can do, I can do meta…”’, in: S. Eng (red.), Proceedings of the 21st IVR World Congress: Lund (Sweden), 12-17 August 2003, Wiesbaden: Frans Steiner Verlag, p. 61.. Polygnotus (talk) 05:51, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

In his book I've Been Thinking, Daniel C. Dennett writes: 'Doug Hofstadter and I once had a running disagreement about who first came up with the quip “Anything you can do I can do meta”; I credited him and he credited me.'^[8] Dennett credited Hofstadter (writing meta- with a hyphen) in Brainchildren: Essays on Designing Minds (1998).^[9] Hofstadter disavowed this claim in I am a Strange Loop, suggesting that the quip was Dennett's brainchild, writing, 'To my surprise, though, this “motto” started making the rounds and people quoted it back to me as if I had really thought it up and really believed it.'^[10]

It is, of course, quite possible that this witty variation on Irving Berlin's "Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)" was invented independently again and again. In 1979, Arthur Allen Leff wrote, in an article in Duke Law Journal: 'My colleague, Leon Lipson, once described a certain species of legal writing as, “Anything you can do, I can do meta.”'^[11] (Quite likely, John Bell (mis)quoted Lipson.) For other, likely independent examples, in 1986, it is used as the title of a technical report stressing the importance of metareasoning in the domain of machine learming (Morik, Katharina. Anything you can do I can do meta. Inst. für Angewandte Informatik, Projektgruppe KIT, 1986), and in 1995 we find this ascribed to cultural anthropologist Richard Shweder.^[12]  --Lambiam 14:40, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

(ec) He may have been mixing this up with "That's all well and good and practice, but how does it work in theory?" which is associated with the University of Chicago and attributed to Shmuel Weinberger, who is a professor there. Dekimasuよ! 14:42, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Did Sir John Hume get entrapped in his own plot (historically)?

In Shakespeare's "First Part of the Contention..." (First Folio: "Henry VI Part 2") there's a character, Sir John Hume, a priest, who manages to entrap the Duchess of Gloucester in the conjuring of a demon, but then gets caught in the plot and is sentenced to be "strangled on the gallows".

My question: Was Sir John Hume, the priest, a historical character? If he was, did he really get caught in the plot he laid for the Duchess, and end up being executed?

Here's what goes on in Shakespeare's play:

In Act 1, Scene 2 [Oxford Shakespeare 1988] Sir John Hume and the Duchess of Gloucester are talking about using Margery Jordan "the cunning witch of Eye" and Roger Bolingbroke, the conjuror, to raise a spirit that will answer the Duchess's questions. It is clear Hume is being paid by the Duke of Suffolk to entrap the Duchess. His own motivation is not political but simple lucre.

In Act 1, Scene 4 the witch Margery Jordan, John Southwell and Sir John Hume, the two priests, and Roger Bolingbroke, the conjuror, conjure a demon (Asnath) in front of the Duchess of Gloucester in order that she may ask him questions about the fate of various people, and they all get caught and arrested by the Duke of York and his men. (Hume works for Suffolk and Cardinal Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, not for York, so it is not through Hume that York knows of these goings on, but York on his part was keeping a watch on the Duchess)

Act 2, Scene 3 King Henry: (to Margery Jordan, John Southwell, Sir John Hume, and Roger Bolingbroke) "You four, from hence to prison back again; / From thence, unto the place of execution. / The witch in Smithfield shall be burned to ashes, / And you three shall be strangled on the gallows."

178.51.16.158 (talk) 16:14, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

John Home or Hume (Home and Hume are pronounced identically) was Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester's confessor. According to this and this "Home, who had been indicted only for having knowledge of the activities of the others, was pardoned and continued in his position as canon of Hereford. He died in 1473." He does not seem to have been Sir John. I'm sure someone who knows more than me will be along soon. DuncanHill (talk) 16:35, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

At this period "Sir" (and "Lady") could still be used as a vague title for people of some status, without really implying they had a knighthood. Johnbod (talk) 20:46, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Identically /hjuːm/ (HYOOM), to be clear.  Card Zero  (talk) 20:17, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Oh, and the First Part of the Contention is Henry Sixt Part II, not Part I! We also have articles about Roger Bolingbroke and Margery Jourdemayne, the Witch of Eye. DuncanHill (talk) 16:59, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. I corrected it now. 178.51.16.158 (talk) 20:34, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

There's also an article for a Thomas Southwell (priest). In Shakespeare he is "John Southwell". The name "John Southwell" does appear in the text of the play itself (it is mentioned by Bolingbroke). I haven't checked if the quarto and the folio differ on the name. His dates seem to be consistent with this episode and Roger Bolingbroke does refer to the other priest as "Thomas Southwell". But nothing is mentioned in the article Thomas Southwell (priest) itself, so that article may be about some other priest named Thomas Southwell. In any case Roger Bolingbroke points out that only Roger Bolingbroke and Margery Jourdemayne were executed in connection with this affair. Shakespeare has them all executed. He must have been in a bad mood when he wrote that passage. Either that, or he just wanted to keep things simple. 178.51.16.158 (talk) 11:42, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

I think that may well be our Southwell, according to "Chronicle of Gregory 1441. 27 Oct 1441. And on Syn Symon and Jude is eve was the wycche (age 26) be syde Westemyster brent in Smethefylde, and on the day of Symon and Jude [28 Oct 1441] the person [parson] of Syn Stevynnys in Walbroke, whyche that was one of the same fore said traytours [Thomas Southwell], deyde in the Toure for sorowe." The Chronicle of Gregory, written by William Gregory is published by the Camden Society DuncanHill (talk) 12:26, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Some experienced editor may then want to add these facts to his article, possibly using the Chronicle of Gregory as a source. 178.51.16.158 (talk) 12:39, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

December 22

Mike Johnson

I saw Mike Johnson on TV a day or two ago. (He was speaking from some official podium ... I believe about the recent government shutdown possibility, the Continuing Resolution, etc.) I was surprised to see that he was wearing a yarmulke. The color of the yarmulke was a close match to the color of Johnson's hair, so I had to look closely and I had to look twice. I said to myself "I never knew that he was Jewish". It bothered me, so I looked him up and -- as expected -- he is not Jewish. Why would he be wearing a yarmulke? Thanks. 32.209.69.24 (talk) 07:40, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Presumably to show his support for Israel and anti-semitism (and make inroads into the traditional Jewish-American support for the Democratic Party). Trump wore one too. Clarityfiend (talk) 10:39, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I did not know that was a "thing". To wear one to show support. First I ever heard of that or seen that. Thanks. 32.209.69.24 (talk) 13:12, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

[Edited to add – Edit Conflict with Lambiam below.] He may also have just come from, or be shortly going to, some (not necessarily religious) event held in a synagogue, where he would wear it for courtesy. I would do the same, and have my (non-Jewish) grandfather's kippah, which he wore for this purpose not infrequently, having many Jewish friends. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 16:39, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

I assume you mis-spoke: to show his support for ... anti-semitism. 32.209.69.24 (talk) 13:16, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

It is somewhat customary, also for male goyim, to don a yarmulke when visiting a synagogue or attending a Jewish celebration or other ceremony, like Biden here while lecturing at a synagogue in Atlanta, Georgia (and under him Trump while groping the Western Wall). Was Johnson speaking at a synagogue?  --Lambiam 16:38, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

It may have been a Hanukkah reception.  --Lambiam 16:50, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Precisely, Lambian. Here is Johnson's official statement. Cullen328 (talk) 17:17, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

This year Hanukkah begins unusually late in the Gregorian calendar, starting at sundown on December 25, when Congress will not be in session. This coincidence can be described by the portmanteau Chrismukkah. So, the Congressional observance of Hanukkah was ahead of schedule this year. Back in 2013, Hanukkah arrived unusually early, during the US holiday of Thanksgiving, resulting in the portmanteau of Thanksgivukkah. Cullen328 (talk) 17:15, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

When you want to check the correlation between Jewish and Christian holidays, you can use the fact that Orthodox Christian months almost always correspond to Jewish months. For Chanucah, the relevant correlation is Emma/Kislev. From the table Special:Permalink/1188536894#The Reichenau Primer (opposite Pangur Bán), in 2024 (with Golden Number 11) Emma began on 3 December, so 24 Emma is 26 December. 92.12.75.131 (talk) 15:45, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, all! Much appreciated! 32.209.69.24 (talk) 02:05, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

Joseph Mary Thouveau, Bishop of Sebastopol

Who was Joseph Mary Thouveau, Bishop of Sebastopol? There is only one reference online ("Letter from Joseph Mary Thouveau. Bishop of Sebastopol, to Philip Lutley Sclater regarding Lady Amherst's Pheasant", 1869), and that has no further details. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:03, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

After that search engine I used insisted I was looking for a Chauveau I finally located this Joseph Marie Chauveau - So the J M Thouveau item from maxarchiveservices uk must be one of the eccentricities produced by that old fashioned hand-written communication they had in the past. --Askedonty (talk) 22:24, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Of interest that other notice Joseph, Marie, Pierre. The hand-written text scribbled on the portrait stands as 'Eveque de Sebastopolis'. Pierre-Joseph Chauveau probably, now is also mentioned as Pierre-Joseph in Voyages ..even though, Lady Amherst's Pheasant is referred, in the same, through an other missionary intermediary: similar. --Askedonty (talk) 23:28, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Also in Contribution des missionnaires français au progrès des sciences naturelles au XIX et XX. (1932). Full texts are not accessible though it seems there is three times the same content in three different but more or less simultaneously published editions. Askedonty (talk) 23:59, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

There is a stub at fr:Joseph-Marie Chauveau (there is also a zh article) and a list of bishops at fr:Évêché titulaire de Sébastopolis-en-Arménie. TSventon (talk) 03:31, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

@Askedonty: Awesome work, thank you; and really useful. I'll notify my contact at ZSL, so they can fix their transcription error.

[The Google Books links aren't showing me the search results, but that's a generic issue, nothing to do with your links]. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:34, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. Those results were in fact detailed enough that we may even document the circumstances associated with Mgr. Chauveau writing the original letter to the Society. Louis Pierre Carreau recounts his buying of specimens in the country, then his learning about the interest for the species in British diplomatic circles about. The French text is available, with the Gallica servers not under excessive stress, in Bulletin de la Société zoologique d'acclimatation 2°sér t. VII aka "1870" p.502 at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb345084433/date; an other account mentioning the specific species is to be found p.194 . --Askedonty (talk) 22:42, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

December 23

London Milkman photo

I am writing a rough draft of Delivery After Raid, also known as The London Milkman in my sandbox. I’m still trying to verify basic information, such as the original publication of the photo. It was allegedly first published on October 10, 1940, in Daily Mirror, but it’s behind a paywall in British Newspaper Archive, but from the previews I can see, I don’t know think the photo is there. Does anyone know who originally published it or publicized it, or which British papers carried it in the 1940s? For a photo that’s supposed to be famous, it’s almost impossible to find anything about it before 1998. Viriditas (talk) 04:01, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Somewhat tellingly, this article about this photo in The Times just writes, "On the morning of October 10, 1940, a photograph taken by Fred Morley of Fox Photos was published in a London newspaper." The lack of identification of the newspaper is not due to reluctance of mentioning a competitor, since further on in the article we read, "... the Daily Mirror became the first daily newspaper to carry photographs ...".  --Lambiam 11:45, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

I see it credited (by Getty Images) to "Hulton Archive", which might mean it was in Picture Post.  Card Zero  (talk) 12:29, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

It was Fox Photos, they were a major agency supplying pictures to all of Fleet Street. DuncanHill (talk) 13:22, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

You mean it might have appeared in multiple papers on October 10, 1940?  Card Zero  (talk) 14:06, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

No, I mean the Hulton credit does not imply anything about where it might have appeared. DuncanHill (talk) 14:14, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

I can't join the dots. Doesn't being credited to the photographic archive of Picture Post imply that it might have appeared in Picture Post? How does the agency being Fox Photos negate the possibility?  Card Zero  (talk) 14:21, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

It wasn't a Hulton picture, it was a Fox picture. The Hulton Archive absorbed other archives over the years, before being itself absorbed by Getty. DuncanHill (talk) 14:31, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Oh! Right, I didn't understand that about Hulton.  Card Zero  (talk) 14:38, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Not in the Daily Mirror of Thursday 10 October 1940. DuncanHill (talk) 13:19, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: Maybe the 11th, if they picked up on the previous day's London-only publication? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:38, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

a lot of searches suggest it was the Daily Mail. Nthep (talk) 18:05, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: I've checked the Mirror for the 11th, and the rest of the week. I've checked the News Chronicle, the Express, and the Herald for the 10th. Mail not on BNA. DuncanHill (talk) 19:38, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

As general context, from my professional experience of picture researching back in the day, photo libraries and agencies quite often tried to claim photos and other illustrations in their collections as their own IP even when they were in fact not their IP and even when they were out of copyright. Often the same illustration was actually available from multiple providers, though obviously (in that pre-digital era) one paid a fee to whichever of them you borrowed a copy from for reproduction in a book or periodical. Attributions in published material may not, therefore, accurately reflect the true origin of an image. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 18:06, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

I just discovered this for myself with Bosman 2008 in The National Gallery in Wartime. In the back of the book it says the London Milkman photo is licensed from Corbis on p. 127. I was leaning towards reading this as an error of some kind before I saw your comment. Interestingly, the Wikpedia article on Corbis illustrates part of the problem. Viriditas (talk) 21:47, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

• Are we sure it was published at the time? I haven't been able to find any meaningful suggestion of which paper it appeared in. I've found a few sources (eg History Today) giving a date in September. I've found several suggesting it tied in with "Keep Calm and Carry On", which of course was almost unknown in the War. DuncanHill (talk) 20:14, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

  That's the thing. There's no direct evidence it was ever published except for a few reliable sources asserting it was. However, I did find older news sources contemporaneous to the October 1940 (or thereabouts) photograph referring to it in the abstract after that date, as if it had been widely published. Just going from memory here, and this is a loose paraphrase, but one early-1940s paper on Google newspapers says something like "who can forget the image of the milkman making his deliveries in the rubble of the Blitz"? One notable missing part of the puzzle is that someone, somewhere, did an exclusive interview with Fred Morley about the photograph, and that too is impossible to find. It is said elsewhere that he traveled around the world taking photographs and celebrated his silver jubilee with Fox Photos in 1950-something. Other than that, nothing. It's like he disappeared off the face of the earth. Viriditas (talk) 21:58, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

  I should also add, the Getty archive has several images of Fred Morley, one of which shows him using an extremely expensive camera for the time. Viriditas (talk) 22:20, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

And furthermore, I haven't found any uses of it that look like a scan from a newspaper or magazine. They all seem to use Getty's original. DuncanHill (talk) 20:16, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

I've searched BNA for "Fox Photo" and "Fox Photos" in 1940, and while this does turn up several photos from the agency, no milkmen are among them. DuncanHill (talk) 22:14, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

No relevant BNA result for "Fox Photo" plus "Morley" at any date. DuncanHill (talk) 22:32, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Has anyone checked the Gale Picture Post archive for October 1940?[13] I don't have access to it. Viriditas (talk) 22:10, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

@Viriditas: You might find someone at WP:RX. DuncanHill (talk) 01:27, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Will look, thanks. Viriditas (talk) 01:33, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Update: The NYT indirectly refers to the photo in the abstract several days after it was initially published in October 1940.[14] I posed the problem to ChatGPT which went through all the possible scenarios to explain its unusual absence in the historical record. It could find no good reason why the photo seems to have disappeared from the papers of the time. Viriditas (talk) 00:33, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Interestingly, this 1942 report by a New York scientific organization indicates that the image (or the story) was discussed in the NY papers. Viriditas (talk) 01:01, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

I did find a suggestion somewhere that the picture was one of a pair with a postman collecting from a pillar box, with the title "The milk comes... and the post goes". Now THAT I have been able to track down. It appears on page 57 of Front Line 1940-1941. The Official Story of the Civil Defence of Britain published by the Ministry of Information in 1942. It's clearly not the same photo, or even the same session, but expresses the same idea. DuncanHill (talk) 01:38, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes, thank you. Viriditas (talk) 01:43, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Belgia, the Netherlands, to a 16th c. Englishman?

In Shakespeare's "Comedy of Errors" (Act 3, Scene 2) Dromio of Syracuse and his master Antipholus of Syracuse discuss Nell the kitchen wench who Dromio says "is spherical, like a globe. I could find out countries in her." After asking about the location of a bunch of countries on Nell (very funny! recommended!), Antipholus ends with: "Where stood Belgia, the Netherlands?" Dromio hints "Belgia, the Netherlands" stood in her privates ("O, sir, I did not look so low.") My question is not about how adequate the comparison is but on whether "Belgia" and "the Netherlands" were the same thing, two synonymous designations for the same thing to Shakespeare (the Netherlands being the whole of the Low Countries and Belgia being just a slightly more literate equivalent of the same)? Or were "the Netherlands" already the Northern Low Countries (i.e. modern Netherlands), i.e. the provinces that had seceded about 15 years prior from the Spanish Low Countries (Union of Utrecht) while "Belgia" was the Southern Low Countries (i.e. modern Belgium and Luxembourg), i.e. the provinces that decided to stay with Spain (Union of Arras)? 178.51.16.158 (talk) 13:40, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Essentially they were regarded as the same - you might look at Leo Belgicus, a visual trope invented in 1583, perhaps a decade before the play was written, including both (and more). In Latin at this period and later Belgica Foederata was the United Provinces, Belgica Regia the Southern Netherlands. The Roman province had included both. Johnbod (talk) 15:40, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Johnbod, I agree with your explanation, but I thought that Gallia Belgica was south of the Rhine, so it only included the southern part of the United Provinces. TSventon (talk) 16:39, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it seems so - "parts of both" would be more accurate. The Dutch didn't want to think of themselves as Inferior Germans, that's for sure! Johnbod (talk) 17:40, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

This general region was originally part of Middle Francia aka Lotharingia, possession of whose multifarious territories have been fought over by themselves, West Francia (roughly, France) and East Francia (roughly, Germany) for most of the last 1,100 years. The status of any particular bit of territory was potentially subject to repeated and abrupt changes due to wars, treaties, dynastic marriages, expected or unexpected inheritances, and even being sold for ready cash. See, for an entertaining (though exhausting as well as exhaustive) account of this, Simon Winder's Lotharingia: A Personal History of Europe's Lost Country (2019). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 18:19, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Actually Middle Francia, Lotharingia, different birds: Middle Francia was allocated to Lothair 1 (795-855), Lotharingia was allocated to (and named after) his son Lothair 2 (835-869) (not after his father Lothair 1). Lotharingia was about half the size of Middle Francia, as Middle Francia also included Provence and the northern half of Italy. Upper Lotharingia was essentially made up of Bourgogne and Lorraine (in fact the name "Lorraine" goes back to "Lotharingia" etymologically speaking, through a form "Loherraine"), and was eventually reduced to just Lorraine, whereas Lower Lotharingia was essentially made up of the Low Countries, except for the county of Flanders which was part of the kingdom of France, originally "Western Francia". In time these titles became more and more meaningless. In the 11th c. Godefroid de Bouillon, the leader of the First Crusade and conqueror of Jerusalem was still styled "Duc de Basse Lotharingie" even though by then there were more powerful and important rulers in that same territory (most significantly the duke of Brabant) 178.51.16.158 (talk) 19:18, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Oh sure, the individual blocks of this historical lego construction were constantly splitting, mutating and recombining in new configurations, which is why I said 'general region'. Fun related fact: the grandson of the last Habsburg Emperor, who would now be Crown Prince if Austria-Hungary were still a thing, is the racing driver 'Ferdy' Habsburg, whose full surname is Habsburg-Lorraine if you're speaking French or von Habsburg-Lothringen if you're speaking German. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 22:54, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Down, from the lego to the playmobil - a country was a lot too much a fuzzy affair without a military detachment on the way to recoinnaitre! --Askedonty (talk) 00:07, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

The Netherlands, 50 A.D.

In Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico, the Belgians (Belgae) were separated from the Germans (Germani) by the Rhine, so the Belgian tribes then occupied half of what now is the Netherlands.  --Lambiam 00:11, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

More like a third, but this is complicated by the facts that: (A) the Rhine is poorly defined, as it has many branches in its delta; (B) the branches shifted over time; (C) the relative importance of those branches changed; (D) the land area changed with the changing coastline; and (E) the coastline itself is poorly defined, with all those tidal flats and salt marshes. Anyway, hardly any parts of the modern Netherlands south of the Rhine were part of the Union of Utrecht, although by 1648 they were mostly governed by the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. In Shakespeare's time, it was a war zone. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:57, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

The Rhine would have been the Oude Rijn. Several Roman forts were located on its southern bank, such as Albaniana, Matilo and Praetorium Agrippinae. This makes the fraction closer to 40% (very close if you do not include the IJsselmeer polders).  --Lambiam 02:41, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Indigenous territory/Indian reservations

Are there Indigenous territory in Ecuador, Suriname? What about Honduras, Guatemala, and Salvador? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kaiyr (talk • contribs) 18:31, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

In Suriname not as territories. There are some Amerindian villages. Their distribution can be seen on the map at Indigenous peoples in Suriname § Distribution.  --Lambiam 23:58, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

December 24

Testicles in art

What are some famous or iconic depictions of testicles in visual art (painting, sculpture, etc)? Pre 20th century is more interesting to me but I will accept more modern works as well. 174.74.211.109 (talk) 00:11, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately not pre-20th century, but the first thing that comes to mind is New York's Charging Bull (1989) sculpture, which has a famously well-rubbed scrotum. GalacticShoe (talk) 02:41, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

What's "iconic"? There's nothing special about testicles in visual arts. All male nudes originally had testicles and penises, unless they fell off (penises tended to do that more, leaving just the testicles) or were removed. There was a pope who couldn't stand them so there's a big room in a basement in the Vatican full of testicles and penises. Fig leaves were late fashion statements, possibly a brainstorm of the aforementioned pope. Here's one example from antiquity among possibly hundreds, from the Moschophoros (genitals gone but they obviously were there once), through the Kritios Boy, through this famous Poseidon that used apparently to throw a trident [15] (über-famous but I couldn't find it on Wikipedia, maybe someone else can; how do they know it's not Zeus throwing a lightning bolt? is there an inscription?), and so many more! 178.51.16.158 (talk) 05:07, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

The article you're looking for is Artemision Bronze. GalacticShoe (talk) 07:09, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

And maybe the Cerne Abbas Giant. Shantavira|^{feed me} 10:21, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Bake-danuki, somewhat well-known in the West through Pom Poko.  Card Zero  (talk) 11:16, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Racoons are often depecited in Japanese art as having big balls. As in 1/4 the size of the rest of their body. 146.90.140.99 (talk) 23:44, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

These are raccoon dogs, an entirely different species, not even from the same taxonomic family as raccoons. The testicularly spectacularly endowed ones are bake-danuki, referred to in the reply above yours.  --Lambiam 02:28, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

European dynasties that inherit their name from a female: is there a genealogical technical term to describe that situation?

The Habsburg were descended (in the male line) from a female (empress Maria Theresa). They were the Habsburg rulers of Austria because of her, not because of their Lorraine male ancestor. So their name goes against general European patrilinear naming customs. Sometimes, starting with Joseph II they are called Habsburg-Lorraine, but that goes against the rule that the name of the father comes first (I've never heard that anyone was called Lorraine-Habsburg) and most people don't even bother with the Lorraine part, if they even know about it.

As far as I can tell this mostly occurs in states where the sovereign happens at some point to be a female. The descendants of that female sovereign (if they rule) sometimes carry her family name (how often? that must depend on how prominent the father is), though not always (cf. queen Victoria's descendants). Another example would be king James, son of Mary queen of Scots and a nobody. But sometimes this happens in families that do not rule over anything (cf. the Chigi-Zondadari in Italy who were descended from a male Zondadari who married a woman from the much more important family of the Chigi and presumably wanted to be associated with them).

What do genealogists, especially those dealing with royal genealogies, call this sort of situation? I'm looking for something that would mean in effect "switch to the mother's name", but the accepted technical equivalent if it exists.

Also do you know of other such situations in European history?

In England where William (Orange) and Mary (Stuart) were joint sovereign did anyone attempt to guess what a line descended from them both would be called (before it became clear such a line would not happen)?

178.51.16.158 (talk) 03:46, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

It happens a fair amount in European history, but I'm not sure it means what you think it means. It's generally a dynastic or patrilineal affiliation connected with the woman which is substituted, not the name of the woman herself. The descendents of Empress Matilda are known as Plantagenets after her husband's personal nickname. I'm not sure that the Habsburg-Lorraine subdivision is greatly different from the Capetian dynasty (always strictly patrilineal) being divided into the House of Artois, House of Bourbon, House of Anjou, etc. AnonMoos (talk) 09:52, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

By the name of the mother I didn't mean her personal name (obviously!) but her line. The example I used of Maria Theresa should have been enough to clarify that. The cases of the Plantagenets (like that of the descendants of Victoria who became known as Saxe-Cobourg, not Hanover) are absolutely regular and do fall precisely outside the scope of my question. The Habsburg-Lorraine are not a new dynasty. The addition of "Lorraine" has no importance, it is purely decorative. It is very different from the switch to collateral branches that happened in France with the Valois, the Bourbon, which happened because of the Salic law, not because of the fact that a woman became the sovereign. Obviously such situations could never occur in places where the Salic law applied. It's happened regularly recently (all the queens of the Netherlands never prevented the dynasty continuing as Oranje or in the case of England as Windsor, with no account whatsoever taken of the father), but I'm not sure how much it happened in the past, where it would have been considered humiliating for the father and his line. In fact I wonder when the concept of that kind of a "prince consort" who is used to breed children but does not get to pass his name to them was first introduced. Note neither Albert nor Geoffrey were humiliated in this way and I suspect the addition of "Lorraine" was just to humor Francis (who also did get to be Holy Roman Emperor) without switching entirely to a "Lorraine" line and forgetting altogether about the "Habsburg" which in fact was the regular custom, and which may seem preposterous to us now given the imbalance of power, but was never considered so in the case of Albert even though he was from an entirely inconsequential family from an entirely inconsequential German statelet. I know William of Orange said he would refuse such a position and demanded that he and Mary be joint sovereign hence "William and Mary". 178.51.16.158 (talk) 10:29, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

As a sidenote, the waters of this question are somewhat muddied by the fact that Surnames as we know them were not (even confining ourselves to Europe) always a thing; they arose at different times in different places and in different classes. Amongst the ruling classes, people were often 'surnamed' after their territorial possessions (which could have been acquired through marriage or other means) rather than their parental name(s). Also, in some individual family instances (in the UK, at any rate), a man was only allowed to inherit the property and/or title of/via a female heiress whom they married on the condition that they adopted her family name rather than her, his, so that the propertied/titled family name would be continued. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 13:57, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Or 'surnamed' after their lack of territorial possessions, like poor John Lackland.  --Lambiam 02:09, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

In the old style of dynastic reckoning, Elizabeth II would have been transitional from Saxe-Coburg to Glucksberg, and even under the current UK rules, descendants of Prince Philip (and only those descendants) who need surnames use Mountbatten-Windsor. -- AnonMoos (talk) 14:06, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

In hyphenated dynasty names, the elements are typically not father and mother but stem and branch: Saxe-Weimar was the branch of the Saxon dukes whose apanage included the city of Weimar, Bourbon-Parma the branch of Bourbon (or Bourbon-Anjou) that included dukes of Parma. —Tamfang (talk) 03:48, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

December 25

Death Row commutations by Biden

Biden commuted nearly all of the Federal Death Row sentences a few days ago. Now, what’s the deal with the Military Death Row inmates? Are they considered "federal" and under the purview of Biden? Or, if not, what’s the distinction? Thanks. 32.209.69.24 (talk) 02:29, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

This page and the various tabs you can click from there include a lot of information. There hasn't been a military execution since 1961 and there are only four persons on the military death row at this point. The President does have the power to commute a death sentence issued under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It is not clear why President Biden did not address those four cases when he commuted the sentences of most federal death row inmates a few days ago, although two of the four cases (see here) are linked to terrorism, so would likely not have been commuted anyway. Xuxl (talk) 14:45, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. Does anyone have any idea about why Biden did not commute these death sentences? 32.209.69.24 (talk) 06:17, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Coca Romano's portraits of Ferdinand and Marie of Romania

I am trying to work out when Coca Romano's coronation portraits of Ferdinand and Marie of Romania were actually completed and unveiled. This is with an eye to possibly uploading a photo of them to this wiki: they are certainly still in copyright in Romania (Romano lived until 1983), but probably not in the U.S. because of publication date.

The coronation took place in 1922 at Alba Iulia. The portraits show Ferdinand and Marie in their full regalia that they wore at the coronation. They appear to have been based on photographs taken at the coronation, so they must have been completed after the event, not before.

A few pieces of information I have: there is no date on the canvasses. The pieces are in the collection of the Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu (inventory numbers 2503 for the picture of Marie and 2504 for Ferdinand) [Reference for undated and for inventory numbers: [ [16], p. 36-37], and were on display this year at Art Safari in Bucharest, which is where I photographed them. If they were published (always a tricky concept for a painting, but I'm sure they were rapidly and widely reproduced) no later than 1928, or in a few days 1929, we can upload my photo in this wiki. - Jmabel | Talk 04:58, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

(I've uploaded the image to Flickr, if anyone wants a look: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jmabel/54225746973/). - Jmabel | Talk 05:25, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

Was it ever mentioned in the Bible that the enslaved Jews in Egypt were forced to build the pyramids?

The question as topic. I'm pretty rusty on the good book, but I don't recall that it was ever directly specified in Exodus, or anywhere else. But it seems to be something that is commonly assumed. 146.90.140.99 (talk) 23:39, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

According to this video, the story that the pyramids were built with slave labour is a myth; the builders were skilled workers, "engineers, craftsmen, architects, the best of the best". The people of the children of Israel being forced to work for the Pharaoh is mentioned in Exodus 1:11: "So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh.". The pyramids are not mentioned in the Bible.  --Lambiam 02:06, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. I thought that was the case. It's been 30 years since I read the Bible from cover to cover (I mainly just have certain passages highlighted now that I find helpful). But I do remember Zionist people very recently online Facebook claiming that the Jews built the pyramids and that Egyptian nationalists can go fuck themselves with their historical complaints about Israeli invasions of the Sinai Peninsula. 146.90.140.99 (talk) 02:43, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Right. You people can't help yourselves, can you? You didn't have to read the Bible cover to cover to find the answer. It's there in the first paragraphs of the book of Exodus. But you were looking for an excuse to talk about "Zionist people", weren't you? Of course any connection between pyramids and the Sinai is nonsensical (if it was actually made and you didn't just make it up) and there are idiots everywhere including among "Zionist people". Except you're no better, since you decided to post a fake question just to have an excuse to move the "conversation" from Facebook to Wikipedia. 178.51.7.23 (talk) 03:36, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

You are mistaken. I support Israel 100%. I maybe shouldn't have said "Zionist" but I had a few drinks - what is the correct term to use for people who support Israel??. I was legit interested from half the world away about some historical arguments I saw online. 146.90.140.99 (talk) 03:50, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Anyway, Egyptian pyramids (certainly stone pyramids) were mainly an Old Kingdom thing, dating from long before Hyksos rule or Egyptian territorial involvement in the Levant. At most times likely to be relevant to the Exodus narrative, the Valley of the Kings was being used for royal burials... AnonMoos (talk) 03:05, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

The chief pyramid-building era was around the 26th century BCE. Exodus, if it happened, would have been around the 13th century BCE, 1300 years later. A long time; we tend to misunderstand how long the ancient Egyptian period was. Acroterion (talk) 04:00, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

One factoid that turns up here and there is that Cleopatra, as ancient as she is to us, is chronologically closer to our time than to the time the pyramids were built. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:11, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

December 26

What would the president Trump brokered peace treaty in Ukraine look like?

I know this is probably speculation, but going by what I've read in a few articles - how would the new president sort this out?

- the war stops

- Russia withdraws all troops from the invaded regions of Ukraine

- Ukraine withdraws all troops from the same regions

- these regions become a DMZ, under control of neither party for the next 25 years, patrolled by the United Nations (or perhaps the USA/Britain and China/North Korea jointly)

- Russia promises to leave Ukraine alone for 25 years

- Ukraine promises not to join NATO or the EU for 25 years

- A peace treaty will be signed

- The can will be kicked down the road for 25 years, at which point more discussions or wars will commence

So maybe the Americans will say "this is the best deal you're going to get, in the future we're going to be spending our money on our own people and no-one else - if you don't take it, we'll let the Russians roll right over you and good luck to you".

Is this basically what is being said now? I think this is what Vance envisioned. 146.90.140.99 (talk) 03:01, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

The downside is that the residents of the buffer zone will be compelled to eat their pets. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:12, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Or each other's pets. —Tamfang (talk) 21:52, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

You seem to be overlooking one of the major obstacles to peace -- unless it suffers a stinging military defeat, Russia won't withdraw from territories belonging to 1990s Ukraine which it's formally annexed -- Crimea and Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia... -- AnonMoos (talk) 03:14, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

You're right, Russia won't withdraw from territories belonging to 1990s Ukraine, but it is likely that Ukraine does not expect Russia to do so too. Restoring to pre-war territories and the independent of Crimean, Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia are the best Ukraine can hope for. Stanleykswong (talk) 10:10, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Never heard of any such plan. 25 years? This is completely made up. Can't say I'm surprised since this is the same guy who asked the previous "question". My understanding is that Wikipedia and the Reference Desk are not a forum for debate. This is not Facebook. But this guy seems to think otherwise. Anyway, there's no way that the territories Russia has annexed will ever go back to the Ukraine. The only question which remains is what guarantees can be given to Ukraine that Russia will never try something like this ever again and eat it up piecemeal. The best answer (from Ukraine's point of view) would have been that it join NATO but of course Russia won't have it. If not that, then what? This's exactly where the "art of the deal" comes in. Speculating in advance on Wikipedia is pointless. Better to do that on Facebook. 178.51.7.23 (talk) 03:49, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

You're right, by policy Wikipedia is not a forum and not a soapbox. But attend also to the policy Wikipedia:No personal attacks. Oh, and the guideline assume good faith is another good one.  Card Zero  (talk) 10:27, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Further, it's a bit pointless to tell an OP that WP is not a forum or a soapbox, but then immediately engage in debate with them about the matter they raise. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 18:57, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

A politician's butt dominates his brain. What he is going to do is more important than what he had said. Stanleykswong (talk) 09:57, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Expect that a concept of a peace plan will be ready soon after day one. Until then we can only speculate whose concept. Will it be Musk's, Trump's, Vance's, Rubio's, Hegseth's, Kellogg's? The latter's plan is believed to involve Ukraine ceding the Donbas and Luhansk regions, as well as Crimea, to Russia,^[17] after which the negotiators can proclaim: "Mission accomplished. Peace for our time."  --Lambiam 10:17, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

• There may also be peace plans required for a possible US incursion in Canada and Greenland / Denmark. All three are members of the NATO, so this may be tricky. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 18:42, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Isn't this one of those "crystal ball" things we are supposed to avoid here? - Jmabel | Talk 21:40, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Agree Slowking Man (talk) 00:37, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

If the OP provided an actual source for this claim, then it could be discussed more concretely. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:40, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

It is not a claim, but a question, "What is being said now about the prospects and form of a Trump-brokered peace treaty?" Should the OP provide a source for this question? If the question is hard to answer, it is not by lack of sources (I gave one above), but because all kinds of folks are saying all kinds of things about it.  --Lambiam 19:27, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Whatever the plan may be, Putin reportedly doesn't like it.^[18]  --Lambiam 22:38, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

ID card replacement

In California you can get a drivers' license (DL) from the DMV, which both serves as an ID card and attests that you are authorized to drive a car. Alternatively, from the same DMV, you can get a state ID card, which is the same as a DL except it doesn't let you drive. The card looks similar and the process for getting it (wait in line, fill in forms, get picture taken) is similar, though of course there is no driving test.

If you need a replacement drivers' license, you can request it online or through one of the DMV's self-service kiosks installed in various locations. That's reasonably convenient.

If you need a replacement ID card, you have to request it in person at a DMV office, involving travel, waiting in line, dealing with crowds, etc. DMV appointment shortens the wait but doesn't get rid of it. Plus the earliest available appointments are several weeks out.

My mom is elderly, doesn't drive, doesn't handle travel or waiting in line well, and needs a replacement ID card. I'm wondering why this discrepancy exists in the replacement process. Not looking for legal advice etc. but am just wondering if I'm overlooking something sane, rather than reflexive system justification. Thanks. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:DA2D (talk) 19:39, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

European (Brit) here, so responding with logic rather than knowledge, but . . . . If a replacement ID could be requested remotely and sent, it would probably be easier for some nefarious person to do so and obtain a fake ID; at least if attendance is required, the officials can tell that the 25-y-o illegal immigrant (say) they're seeing in front of them doesn't match the photo they already have of the elderly lady whose 'replacement' ID is being requested.

Drivers' licences have the additional safeguard that drivers are occasionally (often?) stopped by traffic police and asked to produce them, at which point discrepancies may be evident. {The poster formerly known as 87.812.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 00:30, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, I guess there is some sense to that, though I haven't been stopped by police in quite a few years. I reached the DMV by phone and they say they won't issue an actual duplicate ID card: rather, they want to take a new picture of my mom and use that on the new card. Of course that's fine given that we have to go there anyway, but it's another way the DL procedure is different. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:DA2D (talk) 00:46, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

What purpose does the ID card serve? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:27, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

See Identity documents in the United States. These cards can be used for such purposes as boarding a plane, purchasing alcohol or cigarettes where proof of age is required, cashing a check, etc. Most folks use their driver's license for these purposes, but for the minority that does not drive, some form of official id is required from time to time, hence the delivery of such cards by states. --Xuxl (talk) 13:34, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm just wondering under what circumstances a shut-in would ever use it. The OP could maybe explain. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:52, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

OP did not describe a "shut-in". And anyway, have you ever heard the well-known phrase-or-saying "none of your fucking business"? DuncanHill (talk) 21:59, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Are you the OP? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:46, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Not OP and not a shut-in, but ID is necessary for registration for some online services (including ID requirements for access to some state and federal websites that administer things like taxes and certain benefits). I've had to provide photos/scans of photo ID digitally for a couple other purposes, too, though I can't remember off the top of my head what those were. I think one might have been to verify an I-9 form for employment. And the ID number from my driver's license for others. At least a couple instances have been with private entities rather than governments. The security implications always make me wary. -- Avocado (talk) 23:05, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Virtually all of the private information of US citizens has been repeatedly compromised in the last decade. Not a single company or government entity has faced consequences, and no US legislation is in the works to protect our private information in the future. For only one small example, the personal info of 73 million AT&T account holders was released on the dark web this year.[19] In the US, if you're a private company, you can do just about anything and get away with it. If you're a private citizen, there's an entirely separate set of laws for you. Viriditas (talk) 21:25, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Unless someone affiliated with the CA DMV drops by here, I'm afraid none of us are going to be able to tell you why something is the way it is with them. Essentially it's requesting people to guess or predict at why X might be the case. Have you tried contacting them and asking them for an answer? You and/or her could also contact her CA state elected representatives and let them know your feelings on the matter. Sometimes representatives' offices will assist a constitutent with issues they're having involving government services ("constitutent services"). --Slowking Man (talk) 01:43, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

If your mom is old and her medical condition affects her ability to perform daily activities (she couldn't handle the travel or waiting in line well), she can ask her medical doctor to complete a DS 3234 (Medical Certification) form to verify her status. Then you can help her to fill out a DS 3235 application form on the DMV website and submit the required documents accordingly. Stanleykswong (talk) 09:14, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm wondering why this discrepancy exists in the replacement process.

The Real ID Act contributed to the discrepancy in the replacment process, as did several notable fake ID rings on both coasts.[20][21] In other words, "this is why we can't have nice things". Viriditas (talk) 21:17, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

We can't have nice things because those in power regulate the allocation of goods. To distinguish between the deserving and undeserving they need people to have IDs.  --Lambiam 10:05, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

December 27

Building containing candle cabinets

Is there a term (in pretty much any language) for a separate building next to a church, containing candle cabinets where people place votive candles? I've seen this mostly in Romania (and in at least one church in Catalonia), but suspect it is more widespread. (I've also seen just candle cabinets with no separate building, but I'm guessing that there is no term for that.) - Jmabel | Talk 01:40, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Shrine might cover it, but I suspect there's a more specific term in at least one language. {The poster fornerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 21:49, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Somebody contributed a couple of photos of these kind of cabinets to commons. File:Orthodoxe_Nonne_putzt_Kerzenöfchen.JPG and File:Behälter_für_Opferkerzen_an_einer_orthodoxen_Kirche_in_Rumänien.JPG. Both are in Romania, and outdoor. I suppose the purpose of the cabinet is to protect the candles from the weather? I see pictures of indoor racks for candles. One example is File:Religión en Isla Margarita, Valle del Espíritu Santo.jpg which is an upcoming Commons picture of the day. This small dark metal shed full of dripping wax is apparently located in or near to the rather pretty and well-lit Basilica of Our Lady of El Valle, but I saw nothing to tell me the spatial relationship. Some discussion, again about Romanian Eastern Orthodox traditions, in this Flickr photo's text, which calls them ... candle cabinets. (They protect the candles from wind and rain, and protect the church from the candles.)  Card Zero  (talk) 11:11, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

@Card Zero: the things you are posting are, precisely, candle cabinets. What I'm talking about are structures like a proper building, but with just a portal, no doors as such. Here's a rare non-Romanian example I photographed in 2001: File:Montserrat - prayer candles.jpg. Remarkably, I don't see any Romanian examples that really show the structure, they are all too close-in detailed. I'll try to see if I can find an example I may have shot but not yet uploaded. - Jmabel | Talk 04:44, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

December 28

Truncated Indian map in Wikipedia

Why is the map of India always appears truncated in all of Wikipedia pages, when there is no official annexing of Indian territories in Kashmir, by Pakistan and China nor its confirmation from Indian govt ? With Pakistan and China just claiming the territory, why the world map shows it as annexed by them, separating from India ? TravelLover05 (talk) 15:05, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

The map at India shows Kashmir in light green, meaning "claimed but not controlled". It's not truncated, it's differently included.  Card Zero  (talk) 17:17, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Please see no 6 in Talk:India/FAQ ColinFine (talk) 20:18, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

December 29

Set animal's name = sha?

"In ancient Egyptian art, the Set animal, or sha,[citation needed]" - this seems like a major citation needed. Any help? Temerarius (talk) 00:12, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Which article does that appear in? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:18, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

It must be this article. Omidinist (talk) 04:22, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

That term was in the original version of the article, written 15 years ago by an editor named "P Aculeius" who is still active. Maybe the OP could ask that user about it? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:00, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

• Each time, the word šꜣ is written over the Seth-animal.^[22]
• Sometimes the animal is designated as sha (šꜣ) , but we are not certain at all whether this designation was its name.^[23]
• When referring to the ancient Egyptian terminology, the so-called sha-animal, as depicted and mentioned in the Middle Kingdom tombs of Beni Hasan, together with other fantastic creatures of the desert and including the griffin, closely resembles the Seth animal.^[24]
• šꜣ ‘Seth-animal’^[25]
• He claims that the domestic pig is called “sha,” the name of the Set-animal.^[26]

Wiktionary gives šꜣ as meaning "wild pig", not mentioning use in connection with depictions of the Seth-animal. The hieroglyphs shown for šꜣ do not resemble those in the article Set animal, which instead are listed as ideograms in (or for) stẖ, the proper noun Seth.  --Lambiam 08:27, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! The reason I brought it up was because the hieroglyph for the set animal didn't have the sound value to match in jsesh.

Temerarius (talk) 22:15, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

The word sha (accompanying depictions of the Set animal) in hieroglyphs

IMO they should be removed, or, if this can be sourced, be replaced by one or more of the following two:  --Lambiam 09:49, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

December 30

I do not say the Frenchman will not come. I only say he will not come by sea.

1. What is the ultimate source of this famous 1803 quote by John Jervis (1735 – 1823), 1st Earl of St Vincent, First Lord of the Admiralty at the time. I googled Books and no source is ever given except possibly another collection of quotations. The closest I got was: "At a parley in London while First Lord of the Admiralty 1803". That's just not good enough. Surely there must be someone who put this anecdote in writing for the first time.

2. Wouldn't you say this use of the simple present in English is not longer current in contemporary English, and that the modern equivalent would use present continuous forms "I'm not saying... I'm only saying..." (unless Lord Jervis meant to say he was in the habit of saying this; incidentally I do realize this should go to the Language Desk but I hope it's ok just this once)

178.51.7.23 (talk) 11:47, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Assuming he's talking about England, does he propose building a bridge over the Channel? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:13, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

How about a tunnel? --Wrongfilter (talk) 12:29, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

It's a joke. He's saying that the French won't invade under any circumstances (see English understatement). Alansplodge (talk) 20:30, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

The First Lord of the Admiralty wouldn't be the one stopping them if the French came by tunnel (proposed in 1802) or air (the French did have hot air balloons). Any decent military officer would understand that an invasion by tunnel or balloon would have no chance of success, but this fear caused some English opposition against the Channel Tunnel for the next 150 years. Just hinting at the possibility of invasion by tunnel amongst military officers would be considered a joke.

Unless he was insulting the British Army (no, now I'm joking). PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:30, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

The quoted wording varies somewhat. Our article John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent has it as "I do not say, my Lords, that the French will not come. I say only they will not come by sea" in an 1801 letter to the Board of Admiralty, cited to Andidora, Ronald (2000). Iron Admirals: Naval Leadership in the Twentieth Century. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 3. ISBN 978-0-313-31266-3.. Our article British anti-invasion preparations of 1803–05 has Jervis telling the House of Lords "I do not say the French cannot come, I only say they cannot come by sea", and then immediately, and without citation, saying it was more probably Keith. I can't say I've ever seen it attributed to Keith anywhere else. DuncanHill (talk) 13:40, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Hmm, Andidora does not in fact say it was in a letter to the Board of Admiralty, nor does he explicitly say 1801. And his source, The Age of Nelson by G J Marcus has it as Jervis telling the House of Lords sometime during the scare of '03-'05. Marcus doesn't give a source. DuncanHill (talk) 13:52, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Robert Southey was attributing it to Lord St Vincent as early as 1806, and while I don't want to put too much weight on his phrase "used to say" it does at any rate raise the possibility that St Vincent said (or wrote) it more than once. Perhaps Marcus and our St Vincent article are both right. --Antiquary (talk) 16:38, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Interesting. Thanks. Some modern accounts (not Southey apparently) claim Lord St Vincent was speaking in the House of Lords. If that was the case, wouldn't it be found in the parliamentary record? How far back does the parliamentary record go for the House of Commons and/or the House of Lords. 178.51.7.23 (talk) 17:18, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

As for (2), the tense is still alive and kicking, if I do say so myself. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:12, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

You don't say? [An idiom actually meaning "You say that, do you?", although I dare say most of you know that.] {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 02:47, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

This is not what I am asking. 178.51.7.23 (talk) 05:05, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Then I will answer you more directly. You are wrong: while the usage you quote is less common than it once was, it is still current, according to my experience as a native BrE speaker for over 65 years. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 13:32, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

I kid you not.  --Lambiam 23:47, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

What percentage of Ancient Greek literature was preserved?

Has anyone seen an estimate of what percentage of Ancient Greek literature (broadly understood: literature proper, poetry, mathematics, philosophy, history, science, etc.) was preserved. It doesn't matter how you define "Ancient Greek literature", or if you mean the works available in 100 BC or 1 AD or 100 AD or 200 AD... Works were lost even in antiquity. I'm just trying to get a rough idea and was wondering if anyone ever tried to work out an estimate. 178.51.7.23 (talk) 17:58, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

I don't have an answer handy for you at the moment, but I can tell you that people have tried to work out an estimate for this, at least from the perspective of "how many manuscripts containing such literature managed to survive past the early Middle Ages". We've worked this one out, with many caveats, by comparing library catalogues from very early monasteries to known survivals and estimating the loss rate. -- asilvering (talk) 20:38, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

One estimate is (less than) [27] one percent. --Askedonty (talk) 20:40, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

We have a Lost literary work article with a large "Antiquity" section. AnonMoos (talk) 21:15, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

These are works known to have existed, because they were mentioned and sometimes even quoted in works that have survived. These known lost works are probably only a small fraction of all that have been lost.  --Lambiam 23:35, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Few things which might be helpful:

1. So profuse was Galen's output that the surviving texts represent nearly half of all the extant literature from ancient Greece.
2. Although not just Greek, but only 1% of ancient literature survives. --ExclusiveEditor _{🔔 Ping Me!} 11:12, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

The following quantities are known: $S,$ the number of preserved works, $L,$ the (unknown) number of lost works, and $M_{L},$ the number of lost works of which we know, through mentions in preserved works. In a (very) naive model, let $\mu$ stand for the probability that a given work (lost or preserved) is mentioned in some other preserved work (so $M_{L}=\mu L$). The expected number of mentions of preserved works in other preserved works is then $M_{S}=\mu (S-1).$ If we have the numerical value of the latter quantity (which is theoretically obtainable by scanning all preserved works), we can obtain an estimate for $\mu$ and compute $L\approx {\frac {M_{L}}{M_{S}}}(S-1).$

 --Lambiam 13:09, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

• Even without seeing any professional estimate of the kind I'm asking about here, my ballpark figure was that it had to be less than 1 percent, simply from noting how little of even the most celebrated and important authors has been preserved (e.g. about 5 percent for Sophocles) and how there are hundreds of authors and hundreds of works for which we only have the titles and maybe a few quotes, not to mention all those works of which we have not an inkling, the number of which it is, for this very reason, extremely hard to estimate.

• But as a corollary to my first question I have another three:

• 1. Has any modern historian tackled this paradox, namely the enormous influence that the culture of the Ancient World has had on the West while at the same time how little we actually know about that culture, and as a consequence the problem that we seem to believe that we know much more than we actually do? in other words that our image of it that has had this influence on Western culture might be to some extent a modern creation and might be very different of what it actually was?

• 2. I understand that in this regard there can be the opposite opinion (or we can call it a hypothesis, or an article of faith) which is the one that is commonly held (at least implicitly): that despite all that was lost the main features of our knowledge of the culture of the Ancient World are secure and that no lost work is likely to have modified the fundamentals? Like I said this seems to be the position that is commonly implicitly held, but I'm interested to hear if any historian has discussed this question and defended this position explicitly in a principled way?

• 3. Finally to what extent is the position mentioned in point 2 simply a result of ignorance (people not being aware of how much was lost)? How widespread is (in the West) the knowledge of how much was lost? How has that awareness developed in the West, both at the level of the experts and that of the culture in general, since say the 15th century? Have you encountered any discussions of these points?

178.51.7.23 (talk) 08:40, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

The issues touched upon are major topics in historiography as well as the philosophy of history, not only for the Ancient (Classical) World but for all historical study. Traditionally, historians have concentrated on the culture of the high and mighty. The imprint on the historical record by hoi polloi is much more difficult to detect, except in the rare instances where they rose up, so what we think of as "the" culture of any society is that of a happy few. Note also that "the culture of the Ancient World" covers a period of more than ten centuries, in which kingdoms and empires rose and fell, states and colonies were founded and conquered, in an endless successions of wars and intrigues. On almost any philosophical issue imaginable, including natural philosophy, ancient philosophers have held contrary views. It is not clear how to define "the" culture of the Ancient World, and neither is it clear how to define the degree to which this culture has influenced modern Western society. It may be argued that the influence of say Plato or Sophocles has largely remained confined to an upper crust. I think historians studying this are well aware of the limitations of their source material, including the fact that history is written by the victors.  --Lambiam 13:42, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

References

December 31

Was the fictional character "The Jackal" (as played by Edward Fox and Bruce Willis) based on Carlos The Jackal?

Talking about the fictional assassin from the books and films. I once read somewhere that the real Carlos The Jackal didn't like being compared to the fictional character, because he said he was a professional Marxist revolutionary, not merely a hitman for hire to the highest bidder (not in the article about him at the moment, so maybe not true). 146.90.140.99 (talk) 02:47, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

No, the character wasn't based on Carlos. The films are based on the 1971 historical fiction novel The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth, which begins with a fairly accurate account of the actual 1962 assassination attempt on Charles de Gaulle by the French Air Force lieutenant colonel Jean Bastien-Thiry, which failed. Subsequently in the fictional plot the terrorists hire an unnamed English professional hitman whom they give the codename 'The Jackal'.

Carlos the Jackal was a Venezuelan terrorist named Ilich Ramírez Sánchez operating in the 1970s and '80s. He was given the cover name 'Carlos' when in 1971 he joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. When authorities found some of his weapons stashed in a friend's house, a copy of Forsyth's novel was noticed on his friend's bookshelf, and a Guardian journalist then invented the nickname, as journalists are wont to do. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 03:15, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

There's also the fictionalised Ilich Ramírez Sánchez / Carlos the Jackal from the Jason Bourne novels. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:44, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

References

I am on to creating an article on Lu Chun soon. If anyone has got references about him other than those on google, it would be great if you could share them here. Thanks, ExclusiveEditor _{🔔 Ping Me!} 11:20, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Did you try the National Central Library of Taiwan? The library has a lot of collection about history of Tang dynasty. If you want to write a research paper for publication purpose, you need to know what have been written by others. Then the National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertation in Taiwan under the central library can be a good starting point. Stanleykswong (talk) 09:16, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Battle of the Granicus

This month some news broke about identification of the Battle of the Granicus site, stating in particular: "Professor Reyhan Korpe, a historian from Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University (ÇOMÜ) and Scientific Advisor to the “Alexander the Great Cultural Route” project, led the team that uncovered the battlefield". However, per Battle of the Granicus#Location it seems that the exact site has been known since at least Hammond's 1980 article. Am I reading the news correctly that what Korpe's team actually did was mapping Alexander’s journey to the Granicus rather than identifying the battle site per se? Per news, "Starting from Özbek village, Alexander’s army moved through Umurbey and Lapseki before descending into the Biga Plain". Brandmeister^talk 23:38, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

If Körpe and his team wrote a paper about their discovery, I haven't found it, so I can only go by news articles reporting on their findings. Apparently, Körpe gave a presentation at the Çanakkale Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism for an audience of local mayors and district governors,^[28] and I think the news reports reflect what he said there. Obviously, the presentation was in Turkish. Turkish news sources, based on an item provided by DHA, quote him as saying, "Bölgede yaptığımız araştırmalarda antik kaynakları da çok dikkatli okuyarak, yorumlayarak savaşın aşağı yukarı tam olarak nerede olduğunu, hangi köyler arasında olduğunu, ovanın tam olarak neresinde olduğunu bulduk." [My underlining] Google Translate turns this into, "During our research in the region, by reading and interpreting ancient sources very carefully, we found out more or less exactly where the war took place, which villages it took place between, and where exactly on the plain it took place." I cannot reconcile "more or less" with "exactly".

The news reports do not reveal the location identified by Körpe, who is certainly aware of Hammond's theory, since he cited the latter's 1980 article in earlier publications. One possibility is that the claim will turn out to have been able to confirm Hammond's theory definitively. Another possibility is that the location they identified is not "more or less exactly" the same as that of Hammond's theory.  --Lambiam 02:08, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

January 1

Has there ever been an incident of a serial killer murdering another serial killer?

Question as topic. Has this ever happened outside of the movies? 146.90.140.99 (talk) 05:30, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

This is an interesting question. Just because you can't find any incident, doesn't mean this kind of case never happened (type II error). Stanleykswong (talk) 09:57, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Apparently yes: Dean Corll was killed by one of his his accomplices, Elmer Wayne Henley. --Antiquary (talk) 12:13, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Of course it would be more notable if the two were not connected to each other. --142.112.149.206 (talk) 08:22, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

If you're including underworld figures, this happens not infrequently. As an Aussie, a case that springs to mind was Andrew Veniamin murdering Victor Pierce. Both underworld serial murderers. I'm sure there are many similar cases in organised crime. Eliyohub (talk) 08:40, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Aren't hired killers distinct from the usual concept of a serial killer? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:11, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Another serial killer question

about 20 years ago, I saw a documentary where it was said that the majority of serial killers kill for sexual gratification, or for some sort of revenge against their upbringing, or because in their head that God (or someone else) told them to kill. But the FBI agent on the documentary said something about how their worst nightmare was an extremely intelligent, methodical killer who was doing what he did to make some sort of grand statement about society/political statement. That this sort of killer was one step ahead of law enforcement and knew all of their methods. Like a Hannibal Lecter type individual. He said that he could count on the fingers of one hand the sort of person who he was talking about, but that these killers were the most difficult of all to catch and by far the most dangerous. Can you tell me any examples of these killers? 146.90.140.99 (talk) 05:49, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Ted Kaczynski ("the Unabomber") comes to mind. --142.112.149.206 (talk) 07:06, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

I second this. Ted the Unabomber only got finally caught by chance, only after his brother happened to recognise him. Eliyohub (talk) 08:43, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

More than a few killed for money; Michael Swango apparently just for joy. The case of Leopold and Loeb comes to mind, who hoped to demonstrate superior intellect; if they had not bungled their first killing despite spending seven months planning everything, more would surely have followed.  --Lambiam 15:09, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Missing fire of London

British Movietone News covered the burning down of the Crystal Palace in this somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but apparently factual, film. At 00:15 it refers to 'the biggest London blaze since 1892'. What happened in 1892 that could be considered comparable to the Palace's demise, or at least sufficiently well-known to be referred to without further explanation?

I can see nothing in History of London, List of town and city fires, List of fires or 1892. The London Fire Journal records "May 8, 1892 - Scott's Oyster Bar, Coventry Street. 4 dead.", but also lists later fires with larger death tolls. Does anyone have access to the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society's article Fires in London and the Metropolitan Fire Brigade in 1892? -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 13:48, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

I see the Great Fire of 1892 destroyed half the capital of Newfoundland and Labrador. But comparing that to the Crystal Palace fire, which destroyed only the Crystal Palace, is an odd choice.  Card Zero  (talk) 14:45, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

It would also be odd to call it a "London blaze".  --Lambiam 15:15, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

The closest I found was the 1861 Tooley Street fire. Alansplodge (talk) 16:30, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Also a large fire at Wood Street in the City in 1882 (perhaps later mistaken for 1892?). [29] Alansplodge (talk) 16:40, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

I too wonder whether the Movietone newsreader was the victim of a typo. In December 1897 Cripplegate suffered "the greatest fire...that has occurred in the City since the Great Fire of 1666". [30]. --Antiquary (talk) 11:46, 2 January 2025 (UTC) That's also mentioned, I now see, in Verbarson's London Fire Journal link. --Antiquary (talk) 12:24, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

@Verbarson: Fires in London and the Metropolitan Fire Brigade in 1892 is available on JSTOR as part of the Wikipedia Library. It doesn't give details of any individual fires. DuncanHill (talk) 16:51, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

@DuncanHill:, so it is. The DOI link in that article is broken; I should have been more persistent with the JSTOR search. Thank you. -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 17:15, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Unexpectedly, from the Portland Guardian (that's Portland, Victoria): GREAT FIRE IN LIONDON. A great fire is raging in the heart of the London ducks. Dated 26 November 1892.  Card Zero  (talk) 07:02, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Oh, the poor ducks.  --Lambiam 12:05, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

The whole OCR transcript of that blurred newspaper column is hilarious. "The fames have obtained a firm bold", indeed! {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 12:07, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Setting aside the unsung history of the passionate ducks of London, what I see in that clipping is:

• 1892 - Australia is still a colony (18+ years to go)
• which is linked to the UK by (i) long-distance shipping, and (ii) telegraph cables
• because of (i), the London docks are economically important
• because of (ii), they get daily updates from London

Therefore, the state of the London docks (and the possible fate of the Australian ships there) is of greater importance to Australian merchants than it is to most Londoners. So headlines in Portland may not reflect the lesser priority of that news in the UK? -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 17:15, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I was highly impressed by the rapidity of the Victorian Victorian telegraph system there. But my money's on Antiquary's theory, above - I think the newsreel announcer's script had 1892 as a typo for 1897.  Card Zero  (talk) 18:31, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

December 19

Initial /r/ as obstruent in Indian English?

I recently watched an Indian movie primarily in English, and couldn't help noticing utterance-initial /r/ was frequently realized as what sounded to me like an affricate, [d͡ɻ̝]. I heard "jite" only to realize it was "right", and so on. They may have been [r̝] or [ʐ], but at any rate a sound with frication. "Rather" here also sounds to me like an obstruent. But to my surprise I can't seem to find discussion of this not only on Wikipedia but anywhere. Are there sources for this? Is this type of allophony commonly found in South Asia? Nardog (talk) 13:00, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Temperatures

Do people in countries that use metric system refer to temperatures in groups of 10, such as 0s (0-9 C), 30s (30-39 C), -10s (-19 - -10C), sometimes with "low", "mid", "high" added? How would people pronounce "0s"? -- 40bus

Its usual name is "degrees Celsius"... AnonMoos (talk) 19:36, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

I wouldn't say so, I think the differences between the lower and higher numbers might feel too big for general usage. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:52, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Terms like "the high 60s" used to be used by UK weather forecasters when Fahrenheit was standard, which was also when forecasting was less precise. Nowadays, with much more accurate forecasting enabling exact numbers, and with Celsius in use (which, as Wakuran alludes, anyway has degrees 1.8-times larger than Fahrenheit's) such ranges and terms are much less frequently used in the UK.

The range 0–9 was (in the UK) never routinely referred to as '"the zeros" (to my agéd recollection, though as a joke it would be understood). Terms like "below ten" (or whatever), or "X above zero" were used instead. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 01:50, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I know that some warnings in Australia use these ranges. And if 11 C is "low 10s", then -11 C is "high -10s", because negative temperatures have higher numbers colder. --40bus (talk) 06:15, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

-11 C would be very uncommon in Australia HiLo48 (talk) 10:24, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

In the Netherlands, there's occasional talk about "twintigers" (20s) and "dertigers" (30s), and also "dubbele cijfers" (double digits, ≥10°C), but it's more common to use adjectives like "warm" (≥20°C), "zomers" (summer-like, ≥25°C) and "tropisch" (tropical, ≥30°C). In a meteorological context, those adjectives have a precise definition. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:06, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

In the UK, low, mid, or high teens, twenties or thirties [degrees Celcius] are sometimes used, an example is this London radio station website:

"The rain and grey skies that have dominated the weather in recent weeks have slowly been replaced by sun and temperatures in the mid-twenties over the past few days. [31]

Or this national newspaper:

"There is a 30 per cent chance that temperatures could soar to the mid-30s next week" [32]

Or this from the Met Office, the United Kingdom's national weather and climate service:

The heatwave of 2018 continues across much of England this week, with temperatures expected to reach the high-20s or low 30s Celsius across the Midlands" [33]

I have never heard this formulation used for lower temperatures, but "around zero" or "around freezing" are common. Alansplodge (talk) 12:46, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Because those temperatures are so uncommon it might rarely apply but I would find saying "temperatures in the negative (mid-)20s" quite reasonable. Canadians, perhaps? -- 79.91.113.116 (talk) 11:49, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

40bus, heard on the BBC TV weather forecast last night; "temperatures in the low-single-figures" (i.e. between 2° and 5° celsius). Alansplodge (talk) 12:32, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

December 20

Sequences of aspirate stops in Ancient Greek and their reflexes as fricatives in Modern Greek?

There are in Ancient Greek sequences of aspirate stops: for example khthoon (earth), etc. I think there are even sequences of identical aspirates (double aspirates) but I couldn't think of any off the top of my head.

Now aspirate stop geminates or even sequences of aspirate stops are, I would think, fairly problematic from the point of view of phonetics.

I guess you could posit that those were sequences of aspirate stops (or double aspirate stops) only in spelling and that in actual fact phonetically there was only one aspiration at the end of the sequence. The problem with this assumption is that those sequences produce sequences of fricatives in Modern Greek, which would seem to indicate in fact two aspirates?

Or do people imagine more complex processes: where the 1st fricative was originally an unaspirate stop that became a fricative under the influence of the 2nd fricative (assimilation) but that only the 2nd fricative goes back to an Ancient Greek aspirate stop?

What's the answer? Is there a consensus?

Incidentally: do sequences of fricatives in Modern Greek only occur in words that are borrowed from Ancient Greek (literate borrowings) or do they occur also in Modern Greek words that are inherited from Ancient Greek?

178.51.16.158 (talk) 07:34, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

In ancient Greek, geminated aspirates were written pi-phi. tau-theta, and kappa-chi: Sappho, Atthis, Bacchus. You can also see Bartholomae's law (though it doesn't apply in Greek)... AnonMoos (talk) 07:46, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

By the way, some of the non-geminate aspirate consonant clusters in ancient Greek came from the so called Indo-European "thorn clusters"... -- AnonMoos (talk) 07:51, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

For the non-homorganic clusters, I'd need to dust up my references for this, but as far as I remember, the natural sound change leading to Modern Greek actually dissimmilated these, leading to clusters of fricative + simple plosive, so Ancient χθ, φθ become χτ, φτ. The χθ, φθ clusters pronounced as double fricatives in Modern Greek are reading pronunciations of inherited spellings. Can't give you refs for the phonetic nature of the clusters before fricatization, off the top of my head. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:55, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Referring to Ancient Greek phonology, Koine Greek phonology and Medieval Greek, Wiktionary gives the 5th BCE Attic pronunciation for the geminates πφ, τθ, κχ as having both stops aspirated, the 1st CE Egyptian pronunciation with an unaspirated plus an aspirated stop, and the 4th CE Koine as well as later (10th CE Byzantine, 15th CE Constantinopolitan) pronunciations as having an unaspirated stop followed by a fricative. See Σαπφώ, Ἀτθίς, Βάκχος.

For the the non-homorganic clusters, the development seems to be different: both still aspirated in 1st CE Egyptian pronunciation and both fricative in Koine and beyond; see χθών, φθόγγος.  --Lambiam 11:26, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I suspect (sans evidence) that Greek khth and phth would be better understood as /{kt}ʰ/; that is, the ancients understood the aspiration to belong to the cluster as a whole rather than to the stops separately (or either of them). —Tamfang (talk) 22:09, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

While that may be true, it raises the question why they then did not write φφ, θθ and χχ, and even went as far as writing explicitly ῤῥ.  --Lambiam 12:56, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Good point. —Tamfang (talk) 02:22, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

December 21

Were the concepts of "pitch accent" and "syllable" recently introduced from the West in Japanese linguistic science and grammar?

I was intrigued by the fact that Japanese linguists use the Western borrowed term "akusento" to refer to the pitch accent of Japanese? It seems hard to believe that for all those centuries Japanese linguists and grammarians never thought of studying pitch accent which is a prominent feature of most of the dialects of Japanese. (Korean linguists were certainly aware of the pitch accent of Middle Korean: pitch accent was even marked in some early Hangul texts). If that is not the case, and Japanese linguists have been aware of the pitch accent since the beginning of native linguistic science, then how come the Japanese do not have their own native term for the pitch accent?

Anecdotally, while young Japanese people who study linguistics or even study to become teachers, even primary school teachers, are taught about the Japanese pitch accent, the way the standard language and the dialects differ, etc. many regular Japanese people, particularly fairly old ones, still subscribe to the notion that Japanese pitch contour is a monotone. It is somewhat amusing to see them try and "help" foreigners learning Japanese with artificial demonstrations of how Japanese "ought to be spoken" that so obviously have nothing to do with the way they actually speak.

In the same vein, when was the concept of "syllable" introduced in Japanese linguistics? Is there even a native term for the concept of syllable?

In general Japanese people are aware of kanas (moras) because it is kanas that are written and it is in terms of kanas that the pronunciation of kanji (for example) is described. The so called syllabaries of Japanese are actually "moraic syllabaries". Japanese poetry counts kanas not syllables. Regular Japanese people seem to be completely ignorant of the concept of syllable. For example everyone knows To-u-kyo-u (the capital city) is 4 kanas (and so 4 moras) long but I've never ever heard anyone mention the fact that it has 2 syllables.

178.51.16.158 (talk) 03:45, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

I guess Japanese could often have borrowed English terms, due to them being more specific than similar Japanese, often Chinese-derived, homonyms. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:16, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

From what I've read, pitch accent in Japanese has a low "Functional load" (as Martinet would express it), and there are significant numbers of people who speak a form of Japanese close to the standard, but without pitch accent. As for borrowing the term from a European language, the fact that it's not a concept which is needed when analyzing the Chinese language could be relevant. (Of course, the concept "syllable" is quite relevant for Chinese.) AnonMoos (talk) 12:44, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

For many languages the notion of syllable is rather artificial. Even if it isn't, it may be unclear. How many syllables do English library and Turkish sıhhat have? What are the constituent syllables of the Dutch word voortaan? Since the concept is not particularly meaningful for the Japanese language, it should not be surprising that its speakers are unfamiliar with it. The useful concept known to most Japanese is the on, a concept of which English speakers are generally quite ignorant.  --Lambiam 12:47, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks guys for your insightful comments. Still, my basic questions are yet unanswered: Are the concepts of "pitch accent" and "syllable" a relatively recent borrowing from Western linguistics or not? (If they're not, and you do have examples of the use of these concepts in traditional Japanese grammar, what is the traditional terminology?) 178.51.16.158 (talk) 14:40, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Japanese uses 音節 (onsetsu) for the concept of a syllable, possibly with the kanji borrowed from Chinese but with unrelated readings.  --Lambiam 02:54, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

The Japanese term for the syllable is 音節. Funnily enough, the mora is known as モーラ, though the term was coined for analysis of Japanese. Nardog (talk) 05:11, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

The Japanese term 拍 (haku) is also used for a mora.  --Lambiam 02:30, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

I would hesitate to say it "is" used, rather than "was", so far as I've seen. Nardog (talk) 12:41, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. And how about the pitch accent, アクセント? No native Japanese equivalent? And most importantly, no attestation of it being dealt with in traditional Japanese grammar prior to Western contact? 178.51.16.158 (talk) 13:10, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

I found this paper (Sugitō 1983) pretty informative. She notes 日本大辞書 (1892) was the first dictionary to mark accent, which it called 音調. But she also cites a paper from 1915 already featuring the term アクセント in the title. Nardog (talk) 14:12, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. I've always been intrigued by this and have asked around for years without ever getting any answers. Finally you've provided some real data. Thanks again. Is 音調 also the Chinese term for "lexical tone" (one of the tones that Chinese "monosyllabic words" have, e.g. like the 4 tones of the standard language)? If it is, then I would guess this phrase is also used in Japanese to refer to those Chinese tones? Which might explain why they thought after awhile that it'd be more specific to adopt the Western term for the Japanese pitch accent? I can see the term 音調 is also used in Korean, hence the same questions? Standard Korean no longer has a lexical pitch accent but Middle Korean did (that was even at times notated in hangul) and some dialects still do, so Korean must have terminology for that.

Incidentally, are you somewhat familiar with the linguistic literature of the Tokugawa (Edo) period? Not only for Japanese but also possibly for Chinese or Sanskrit or other languages? If you are do you know if there are any Edo-jidai Japanese descriptions or grammars or textbooks of the Dutch language? Tokugawa scientific activity was not completely isolated from the West since the Japanese were importing Dutch books on science, medecine, mathematics, technology, etc. (as far as I know that imported learning was called "Rangaku" or "Dutch science"?) through Nagasaki (more exactly Dejima) so some Japanese people must have had some command of the Dutch language if they were to make any use of those books? How were they getting it?

178.51.7.23 (talk) 10:40, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

I might have meant "distinct" rather than "specific", when I think about my phrasing, as well. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:22, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

The modern term for phonological tone is (トーン or) 声調. I had never heard of 音調. I also saw 語調 in some papers by authors Sugitō mentions (particularly 井上奥本), but it now only means tone of voice or choice of words in general.

I'm no expert on Japanese history but there was Kokugaku, with Kamo no Mabuchi and Motoori Norinaga discovering Lyman's law in the 18th century (hello Stigler's law). Note modern Western linguistics didn't start until William Jones connected Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit in 1786, and monolingual dictionaries of contemporary languages had just started to become a thing in Europe; there probably didn't yet exist a large body of research into Dutch or any vernacular and I doubt the Japanese had much to learn from them. King Sejong was ahead of Europe by centuries. Nardog (talk) 11:24, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Two questions

1. Are there any French loanwords in English where French hard C was changed to K when it was borrowed to English?
2. Why most languages do not have native words for continents where they are spoken? For example, neither Finnish nor English have native word for Europe, nor does Swahili have native word for Africa.

--40bus (talk) 21:39, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

@40bus: As an ordinary, little-knowing person, I think the 2. is quite obvious: when languages were emerging, people didn't know there is such thing like 'a continent' and that they were living on one. So there were no such concept known to them, consequently no need to invent either a general word 'continent' nor a specific name for the one where they lived. --CiaPan (talk) 22:04, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

I wonder how much the word continent was used before the Age of Sail! —Tamfang (talk) 18:21, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

1. Thre only one that springs to mind is "skeptical" from the French sceptique. Here in Britain, the usual spelling is "sceptical", but apparently the "k" variant was preferred by 19th-century lexicographers in America, out of deference to its Greek roots. [34] Alansplodge (talk) 15:13, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Your link asserts that skeptical derives directly from Latin rather than from French. Is the <c> really pronounced /k/ in French? That's not what I would have guessed, though I suppose otherwise it would sound the same as septique, assuming that's a word, which would probably not be desired. --Trovatore (talk) 20:08, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

I can confirm that the "c" in "sceptique" is silent in French and that the word is a homophone of "septique", as used in "fosse septique" (septic tank). Xuxl (talk) 14:17, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Italian has an advantage over French here, in that the predictably formed cognates scettico and settico are pronounced differently in the first consonant ([ʃ] vs [s]). --Trovatore (talk) 02:35, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

December 22

To borrow trouble

I recently had occasion to use this phrase, which I believe I learned from my grandma, and it occurred to me I wasn't sure everyone knew it. I went and looked it up in Wiktionary, and found a definition I consider wrong, which I corrected.

But searching, it does seem like the "wrong" definition may actually have some currency in the wild.

My understanding is that to borrow trouble (against tomorrow/against the future/etc) is to spend a lot of effort worrying about or preparing for an adverse event that may never happen. I think this is clearly the definition that makes the most sense and is best historically grounded. Similar sayings include Jesus ("sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof") and William Inge ("worry is interest paid on trouble before it comes due").

The other understanding is that it means "stir up trouble". A Quora post I found claims that this is actually the older meaning, which it dates from the 1850s, whereas the "worry" meaning it dates to the 20th century. This rendering, to me, makes much less sense — in what way is this supposed to be "borrowing"?

Anyway, I would be interested to know if high-quality attestations can be found for the "provocation" meaning, and how it might have come about if it actually predated the "worry" meaning. --Trovatore (talk) 00:57, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

To me the 'stir up' makes sense. 'Borrowing' implies that you now actually have something: if you just worry about something, it may never materialise, but if you talk and/or act in the wrong ways, potential trouble may become actual. I (in the UK) have always read/heard the phrase as being about bringing trouble upon oneself unnecessarily.

The saying is an example of an idiom, where the literal meaning is not (at least any longer) what it actually means. Both individual words, and idioms and other sayings, can drift in meaning over long periods. They may also differ in current varieties of English.

Many expressions in English originate from sailing. The nautical meaning of borrow, "to approach closely to either land or wind" is quoted in the OED from William Henry Smyth's The Sailor's Word Book of 1867 and obviously describes a manouvre with some risk; See also the golfing use of the word – the amount a ball on a sloping green will drift to one side of the hole, which the putting player must compensate for. (If the player compensates too much, they are said to have "over-borrowed".)

May I gently suggest that if you want to correct (or otherwise edit) material in Wiktionary, you should (as here) do so only on the basis of published Reliable sources, not on "what you (or your Granny) know". Many (all?) families have their own internal expressions and word meanings, and every individual has their own idiolect – ones different from yours (or mine) are not automatically "wrong". {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 03:09, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Unlike Wikipedia, Wiktionary has no "reliable sources" requirement.  --Lambiam 14:54, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Which is why I made a suggestion, rather than issuing a ukase. Although Wiktionary does not have that formal requirement, it would be improved if editors there chose to follow it anyway. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 16:21, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

I don't really know the norms on Wiktionary in detail. I believe though that it's based on "attestations" rather than "sources". The only real sources for meanings of words are usually -- other dictionaries, which has an obvious circularity problem. (Similarly, at Wikipedia, which is a tertiary source, we should not ordinarily be relying on other tertiary sources).

As to the merits, the point is that "borrowing" innately involves the idea of the future. You borrow against income you expect to have tomorrow. If you're just creating trouble from scratch, that's not being a borrower, that's being a producer. But if you worry about something not under your control and that may never come to pass, that's borrowing that potential trouble from tomorrow, and making it actual trouble (for you) today. --Trovatore (talk) 20:02, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

The two senses coexist on a dictionary page hosted by Collins, which has,

1. Webster’s New World College Dictionary, 4th Edition: "to worry about anything needlessly or before one has sufficient cause";
2. Penguin Random House/HarperCollins: "to do something that is unnecessary and may cause future harm or inconvenience".

Sense 1 is also found in Longman: "to worry about something when it is not necessary".^[35]

Sense 2 is found in Merriam–Webster: "to do something unnecessarily that may result in adverse reaction or repercussions".^[36] Dictionary.com has the stronger "Go out of one's way to do something that may be harmful".^[37]  --Lambiam 12:07, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

The earliest use I found, from 1808,^[38] is about unnecessary worry.  --Lambiam 12:44, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Idioms are often literal nonsense. Back and forth implies returning before departing: Wiktionary's definition is "From one place to another and back again", not "Returning from a place and then going to it". Head over heels is the normal configuration for a human, and indeed the expression has inverted over time from an earlier heels over head. You can easily and naturally have your cake and eat it too. The difficult thing is eating a cake that you don't, at that point in time, have: or eating a cake and having it later, too.  Card Zero  (talk) 20:49, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

 

The two senses have in common that the subject is doing something unnecessary, and that someone sees potential trouble ahead. In the first sense it is the subject who sees the (unprovoked) trouble, and what they do is worry. In the second sense it is the speaker who fears trouble if the subject does a provocative act. (The speaker may in this case coincide with the subject.)

Looking at books of idioms, it looks almost as if a switch-over occurred between 2008 and 2010.

For the worry sense:

• 1977, Early American Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases.^[39]
• 1995, The Anthracite Idiom.^[40]
• 2008, Idiom Junky.^[41]

For the provoke sense:

• 2010, Oxford Dictionary of English Idioms.^[42] (labelled "North American")
• 2013, The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms.^[43]
• 2015, Professional Learner's Dictionary of Spoken English.^[44]

These are "mentions", not "uses", and not usable as attestations on Wiktionary. For attestations of the "provoke" sense:

• 2016, Stacy Finz, Borrowing Trouble. Kensington, p. 22:^[45]

  Brady hadn’t bothered to change his name, figuring it was common enough. But he stayed off Facebook and Twitter. When Harlee Roberts had wanted to write a feature story about him for the Nugget Tribune, he’d politely declined. No need to borrow trouble.

• 2024 June 11, Kristine Francis, “7 Little Johnstons Recap 06/11/24: Season 14 Episode 14 ‘Burpees and Burp Clothes’”, Celeb Dirty Laundry:^[46]

  Brice didn’t want talk about it because he thought it was borrowing trouble.

• 2024 August 7, Colby Hall, “Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary Defends Kamala Harris Avoiding Press to Fox News: Her Campaign is In ‘Euphoric Stage!’”, Mediaite:^[47]

  From O’Leary’s perspective, shared during Wednesday morning appearance on America’s Newsroom, Harris is enjoying so much momentum at the moment, things are going so well for her since she became the nominee; she has little reasons to borrow trouble by taking tough questions during a press conference or a journalist willing to challenge her.

 --Lambiam 13:46, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Against this is the fact that I (a Brit) have taken the expression to have the 'provoke' sense since the early 1960s. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 17:53, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Can you find earlier uses of that sense in published sources?  --Lambiam 23:52, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

One "borrows" trouble from the future, often unnecessarily. It seems pretty straightforward to me. --Orange Mike | Talk 21:54, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

But it's obviously not using "borrow" in the most normal way. HiLo48 (talk) 23:49, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Repetition

Does English use do-support when the verb is repeated? Can the main verb also be repeated? For example, are the following sentences correct?

• This is why this street has the name it has.
• Jack likes it more than Kate likes.
• I drink milk and you drink too.

--40bus (talk) 08:27, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

The first is correct, the latter two are not.

In such cases, I'm pretty sure any transitive verb still requires its object to be explicitly stated. Remsense ‥ 论 08:35, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Apparently, the what in I know what you know preposes what is called a fused interrogative content clause. I don't go down syntax rabbit holes enough... Remsense ‥ 论 08:56, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

In this sentence, the interrogative content clause is the object, what you know. The word what is a fused relative pronoun, not a clause.  --Lambiam 11:39, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

The other two would normally be phrased as:

• "Jack likes it more than Kate does." (Or less commonly, "Jack likes it more than Kate likes it.")
• I drink milk, and you drink it too." Clarityfiend (talk) 10:45, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Or, "I drink milk and so do you."  --Lambiam 11:44, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Or "I drink milk and you do too". Pondering this street has the name it has, "I drink milk you drink" makes sense, and has a similar structure, but not the required meaning.  Card Zero  (talk) 20:59, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

I consider the repetition of wording a sort of emphasis. Clarityfiend (talk) 13:53, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

The third sentence is grammatical but may not mean what you think it means. (Intransitive "drink" in English tends to mean "drink alcohol", quite likely to excess.) --Trovatore (talk) 20:16, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm reminded of the intransitive "go" (Does your wife go? She sometimes goes, yes.) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:43, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Aye aye nudge nudge say no more.... --Trovatore (talk) 20:44, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

But does your wife come? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:22, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Wiktionary lists 46 intransitive senses.  --Lambiam 01:48, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

In my dialect of (American) English I think I would prefer does even in the first sentence, i.e. "This is why this street has the name (that) it does.", without necessarily considering 'has' wrong. As others have said, the lack of repetition of the direct objects is a bigger problem than not replacing the verbs with a form of 'do'. It makes the sentence sound wrong or have another implication (as "drink"=consume alcohol to excess) rather than just sound non-native. Eluchil404 (talk) 01:36, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

The possibility to use lexical (i.e. non-auxiliary) have without do-support ("At long last, have you no decency, sir?") is quite exceptional; it is unique in this respect among lexical verbs. Colloquially, this is far more common in British English, but seems to be dying out also there, sounding stiff.  --Lambiam 02:13, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

That sounds a bit categorical. There are a lot of archaic-sounding, but clearly grammatical, uses that allow such constructions. Stuff like know you not that I must be about my father's business?. It's not something you would likely say to communicate ideas in any ordinary context, but it's still completely clear what it means, and the syntax still works. --Trovatore (talk) 02:06, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Verily, verily, I say unto thee, "not likely" is too weak; "no way" comes much closer. If "know you not" sounds syntactically acceptable to some, it is only because it is familiar from the syntax of the 1611 KJV, Wiſt ye not that I muſt be about my fathers buſineſſe?,^[48] with the familiarity kept alive through reuse in later revisions, such as Webster's revision from 1833 (knew ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?.^[49]), an archaism that, including the archaic ye, is retained in the 21st Century King James Version.^[50]  --Lambiam 01:27, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

No, I disagree; know you not is syntactically acceptable. If you use it in casual conversation, you're obviously making fun, but it's not nearly as obscure as (say) "wist", and maybe less than "ye". --Trovatore (talk) 19:43, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Demonyms

How are demonyms of overseas territories determined? Are people from Isle of Man, Channel Islands and British Overseas Territories "British"? Are people from all French overseas departments, collectivities and territories "French"? Are people from both Caribbean Netherlands, Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten "Dutch"? And I have never seen demonyms formed from French overseas department names, such as "Réunionian", "Guadeloupean", "French Guinanan", "Mayottean", "Martiniquean", so are their people just "French"? Is this same from overseas collectivities and territories? --40bus (talk) 23:08, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Demonyms are generally listed in the articles. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 00:04, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

There is no system to it. The inhabitants of Corsica are French but still have a demonym, Corsican. The demonym Curaçaoan can be used for the inhabitants of Curaçao. In both cases these terms are ambiguous, because they are also used for members of specific ethnic groups.  --Lambiam 01:37, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Most regions, islands, cities, etc have demonyms, and even for those that don't, you can always say "a <toponym> person" or "a person from <toponym>" if you want to be more precise than just indicating the country. Or if you're asking whether those people are legally full British, Dutch and French nationals, then WP:RDH or WP:RDM would be a better place for that. --Theurgist (talk) 03:03, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

40bus -- The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are under the British Crown, but technically they aren't part of the UK. The demonym for the Isle of Man is "Manx" adjective (as in the famous tailless cat), "Manxman" noun, but you wouldn't be able to predict that. AnonMoos (talk) 03:16, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Although Manx people (and Channel Islanders) are British Citizens. [51] Like everything connected with British governance, it's a tottering pile of complex traditions and reforms; we have never re-started with a clean sheet, and don't intend to either. Alansplodge (talk) 12:41, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

P.S. The French have the lovely word "DOM-TOM" to describe non-Hexagonal territories. On Wikipedia, that redirects to Overseas France, which might answer some of your questions... AnonMoos (talk) 03:20, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Martiniquais, Guadeloupéen and Réunionais are commonly used in French; I guess you just don't run across their English equivalents that often. For Mayotte, which has been in the news a lot of late, the demonym is "Mahorais" for some reason I haven't explored. Other overseas territories have demonyms as well (e.g. Guyanais); this goes even though their inhabitants hold French citizenship. Xuxl (talk) 14:49, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

American citizens include Californians, Texans, Rhode Islanders, Pennsylvanians, etc. Australians include New South Welshmen, Queenslanders, Victorians, etc. The Soviet Union was populated by Russians, Ukrainians, Georgians, Armenians, etc, all of whom were Soviet citizens. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 15:38, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Georgians could be both Sovietans and Americans, though... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:49, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Similarly the French include Normands, Lorrains, Bourguignons and whatnot; though I am not aware of demonyms for the newfangled départements. —Tamfang (talk) 02:38, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Luckily French Wikipedia is. --Antiquary (talk) 15:39, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Mahorais comes from Mahoré, the Maore Comorian name for Grande-Terre (and consequently the entirety of Mayotte.) GalacticShoe (talk) 19:05, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

December 24

Language forums

I was just reading this list of still active web forums, unfortunately there's no language section. What language, linguistics, etymology, and lexicography blogs and forums are there? Epigraphy? Deep knowledge and open attitudes are best. Temerarius (talk) 23:21, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Linguist List hosted some lively discussions in its early days, but by the time I stopped receiving it, it was mainly for conference announcements, job offerings, book announcements etc.; I don't know what it is now. Language Log is still operating, but only approved people can start new topics, and it's focused somewhat on Chinese language and linguistics in recent years. AnonMoos (talk) 01:00, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

There are also general question-answering websites such as Quora, but I don't know if any of them contain an interacting community of people with linguistic expertise. Back in the day, there was also Usenet's "sci.lang", but I haven't participated there for many years, and 2024 seems to be the year when general-purpose Usenet became definitively defunct (only certain niches survive). AnonMoos (talk) 19:14, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

December 25

Ways to improve proposed Help:IPA page

I currently have a draft of a proposed Help:IPA page for the Kannada language, and I was referred here by @Hoary to seek advice on ways I can improve it for potential inclusion in the Help: category. Any advice or criticisms would be much appreciated.

Link to draft: Draft:Help:IPA/Kannada Krzapex (talk) 12:18, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

Hello, @Krzapex. I have little knowledge of Dravidian languages, but I do have some comments about your draft.

• "suit" is not a good choice for English approximation, because it has variant pronunciations as /sut/ and /sjut/.
• I doubt that most English speakers could even tell you what the Korean currency is, and would be unsure how to pronounce it. According to Wiktionary, the currency is pronounced [wʌ̹n] in Korean, and /wɑn/ in AmE, /wɒn/ in BrE - none of them quite the /(w)o/ you want. I think the BrE "want" is probably closest, but I don't know how to convey that to an AmE speaker.
• I really don't think that "Irish 'boat'" (whatever that is supposed to mean) is a good match for /aʊ/
• 'Hungary' has the sequence /ŋg/ in all varieties of English I've ever heard, and certainly in RP/ "Hangar" does not have the /g/ in most varieties of English (except in the Midlands and North West of England).
• your use of "th" to key the dentals will not work for most English speakers outside India (and maybe Ireland). To most Anglophone ears, the salient feature of /θ/ and /ð/ is their fricative nature, not their dental articluation, and if you write "th" you will get θ or ð.

Of course, the whole problem with "English approximation" is that you are trying to capture distinctions that are completely imperceptible to most Anglophones. I see that Help:IPA/Hindi and Urdu addresses this problem in notes, and I think this is the better approach. ColinFine (talk) 14:36, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

December 27

Weird sentence

I recently removed this wording from an article because it looked on the face of it like a grammatical error, but reading closer, I see that it is likely correct but still confusing:

• "He thus became a permanent ambassador at the at the time itinerant royal court."

Should it be left as is, or is there another way to write it that is less confusing? Viriditas (talk) 18:29, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

"He thus became a permanent ambassador at the royal court, which at the time was itinerant." --Wrongfilter (talk) 18:36, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 18:38, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Another way to say it would be to hyphenate at-the-time. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:27, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

I have to admit this sentence threw me for a loop. It isn't often I come across something like this. Does it have a linguistic term? Viriditas (talk) 21:37, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

It's not quite Garden path, but close.

I might have minimally amended it as "He thus became a permanent ambassador at the then-itinerant royal court," but Wrongfilter's proposal is probably better. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 21:47, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

While yours is better than mine. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:56, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

"ambassador to" would be better than "ambassador at". DuncanHill (talk) 22:01, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

The wordy option (not always the best idea) is to replace at the time with contemporarily. I wonder if there's an equivalent word without the Latin stuffiness. I considered meanwhile, but that has slightly the wrong connotations, as if being an ambassador and having a royal court were two events happening on one particular afternoon.

Edit: I mean yes, that word is "then". But here we have a situation where if the word chosen is too fancy, the reader isn't sure what it means, but if the word is too unfancy, the reader can't parse the grammar. Hence the use of a hyphen, I guess. Card Zero  (talk) 11:50, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

It is a rather common rule/guideline/advice to use hyphens in compound modifiers before nouns,^[52][53][54] but when the first part of a compound modifier is an adverb, there is some divergence in the three guidelines linked to (yes but not for adverbs ending on -ly followed by a participle; mostly no; if the compound modifier can be misread). They all agree on happily married couple (no; mostly no; no) and mostly on fast-moving merchandise) (yes; mostly no; yes). They are incomplete, since none give an unequivocally-negative advice for unequivocally-negative advice, which IMO is very-bad use of a hyphen (and so is very-bad use).  --Lambiam 07:04, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Viriditas, have you now edited the article text? None of the rest of us can, because you haven't identified or linked it. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 19:41, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

That is resolved. In the course of finding this I did a search for "at the at the" and fixed five instances that were errors.  Card Zero  (talk) 20:23, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

December 29

A few questions

1. Are there any words in German where double consonant is written after ⟨ei⟩, ⟨au⟩,⟨eu⟩ and ⟨ie⟩?
2. Is there any natural language which uses letter Ŭ in its writing system? It is used in Esperanto, a conlang, in Belarusian Latin alphabet, in McCune-Reichschauer of Korean, and some modern transcriptions of Latin, but none of these uses it in their normal writing system.
3. Why does Lithuanian not use ogonek under O, unlike all other its vowels?
4. Why do so few languages use letter Ÿ, unlike other umlauted basic Latin letters? Are there any languages where it occurs in beginning of word?
5. Are there any languages where letter Ž can occur doubled?
6. Are there any languages where letter Ð (eth) can start a word?
7. Can it be said that Spanish has a /v/ sound, at least in some dialects?
8. Are there any languages where letter Ň can occur doubled?
9. Are there any languages where form of count noun depends on final digits of a number (like it does in many Slavic languages) and numbers 11-19 are formed exactly same way as numbers 21-99? Hungarian forms numbers like that, but it uses singular after all numbers.
10. Why English does not have equivalent of German and Dutch common derivational prefix ge-?

--40bus (talk) 10:01, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

ad 10.: Old English had it: wikt:ge-#Old_English. Then they got rid of it. Maybe too much effort for those lazy bums. --Wrongfilter (talk) 10:19, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Indeed, English dropped it. Maybe it got less useful as English switched to SVO word order. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:42, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

It disappeared early in Old Norse, as well. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:42, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

The reason that "ge-" got dropped in English was because the "g" become a "y" (IPA [j]) by sound changes, and then the "y" tended to disappear, so all that was left was a reduced schwa vowel prefix. AnonMoos (talk) 00:05, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

ad 1.: You mean within a syllable? Otherwise you'd have to accept words like vielleicht. --Wrongfilter (talk) 10:24, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Strauss / Strauß, which except for a name can mean 'bunch' or 'ostrich'. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:42, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

One can find plenty of references stating that a diphthong is never followed by a double consonant in German, including the German Wikipedia. The two examples given don't contradict this, since ß isn't a regular double consonant (as it does not shorten the preceding vowel), and the two l in 'vielleicht' belong (as already implied by Wrongfilter) to different syllables. People's and place names may have kept historic, non-regular spellings and therefore don't always follow this rule, e.g. "Beitz" or "Gauck" (tz and ck are considered double consonants since they substitute the non-existent zz and kk). -- 79.91.113.116 (talk) 20:18, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

ad 4.: Statistics? Only few languages written in the Latin alphabet use umlauts in native words, mostly German and languages with an orthography influenced by German. Similarly, only few use Y in native words. Very few use both. PiusImpavidus (talk) 11:07, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Swedish has both umlauts/ diaeresis and Y (and occasionally Ü in German names and a miniscule number of loanwords, including müsli). Swedish still didn't see a need for Ÿ (and I can't even type a capital Ÿ on my Swedish keyboard in a regular way). 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:56, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

A similar situation applies to 40bus' native Finnish. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:13, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

ad 7.: Seems to be used as an allophone of /f/ under certain circumstances. It's used in Judaeo-Spanish, if it is to be considered a dialect, rather than its own language. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:47, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Regarding 10: Middle English still had y- which goes back to ge- "Sumer is icumen in" (here it is spelled i-); it is still used in Modern English in archaic or humorous forms like: yclad, yclept, and other cases (see the Wiktionary entry I linked to). 178.51.7.23 (talk) 18:11, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

2 & 6: The Jarai language marks short vowels with breves (while leaving the long ones unmarked) so it uses ⟨ŭ⟩ (and ⟨ư̆⟩), while the now-extinct Osage language has initial ⟨ð⟩s. The Wiktionary entries on individual letters usually provide lists of languages that use them. --Theurgist (talk) 10:55, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

December 30

Teaching pronunciation for Spanish in 17th c. France and Italy?

Although it seems that Spanish 'x' and 'j' had both taken on the sound of a velar fricative (jota) at least among the majority of the population already in the course of the 16th c. (is this correct?) the French and the Italians pronounce the title of Cervantes's novel "Don Quixote" with an 'sh' sound (which was the old pronunciation of 'x' until the end of the 15th c.; the letter 'j' was pronounced like French j like the 'ge' in 'garage'; Judaeo-Spanish still uses these pronunciations).

So I've been wondering: Why do the French and the Italian use the archaic pronunciation of 'x'? Is it because this was still the official literate (albeit a minority) pronunciation even in Spain or had that pronunciation already completely disappeared in Spain but was still taught to students of the Spanish language in France and Italy?

178.51.7.23 (talk) 12:57, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Might just be an approximation, since French and Italian lack a velar fricative natively. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:12, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

In French, the protagonist's name is always spelled "Quichotte", never "Quixote" or "Quijote", and is pronounced as if it were a native French word. The article on the book in the French wikipedia [55] explains that this spelling was adopted to approximate the pronunciation used in Spanish at the time. Xuxl (talk) 14:44, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Which is odd since the final -e is silent in French but definitely not silent in any version of Spanish I'm aware of. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:51, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Was final e silent in French at the tme of the novel? —Tamfang (talk) 00:41, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

VIP

Is the acronym "VIP" ever pronounced as a word, as /vɪp/? --40bus (talk) 16:11, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

In my understanding, only jokingly or as shorthand in environments where the meaning would be understood. You probably wouldn't see it in a news broadcast, but I could imagine it being used casually by, say, service workers who occasionally cater to high-end clientele. GalacticShoe (talk) 16:27, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

There was a German TV programme called Die V.I.P.-Schaukel, making a wordplay out of the fact that /vɪp/ sounds like Wipp- (from the verb wippen:to rock, to swing; Schaukel is a swing). It was based on interviews with and documentary bits about famous people. But that does not mean that V.I.P. would normally have been pronounced like that. -- 79.91.113.116 (talk) 16:34, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

In Dutch it's always pronounced /vɪp/, which has no other meanings than VIP. It's still written with capitals. PiusImpavidus (talk) 17:11, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

I believe that is the case for Swedish, as well. Possibly due to the confusion about whether the letters of English abbreviations should be pronounced the English or the Swedish way. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:44, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Somewhat akin to VP for Vice President, typically pronounced "VEE-PEE" but also colloquially as "VEEP". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:34, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

When I was a kid growing up in the UK I used to watch a cartoon called Top Cat (which was renamed Boss Cat in the UK as there was a cat food available called Top Cat). There's a line in the theme song that goes "he's the boss, he's a vip, he's the championship". Or does it say "he's a pip"? Most lyrics sites have it as "pip", but I favour "vip". Decide for yourself here: [56] --Viennese Waltz 10:21, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Ah, that brings back some memories. It sounds like "vip" to me. One thing I'm now wondering: If the series in the UK was called Boss Cat, did they change the song lyrics at all? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:59, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Not according to my memory, @Baseball Bugs. It was transparent even to kids that they'd been forced to change the title, but didn't change anything else. (The dialogue wasn't changed: "TC"). ColinFine (talk) 14:43, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Imported American culture rarely see any changes at all. The term "spaz" might have been changed to "ass" or something, occasionally, as "spaz" is considered more harsh in the UK (and "ass" less so)... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:26, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

December 31

Spanish consonants

Why in Spanish and Portuguese, /s/ sound can never start a word if it is followed by consonant? For example, why is it especial rather than special I think that in Portuguese, it is because of letter S would be pronounced /ʃ/ before a voiceless consonant, but in beginning of word, /ʃ/ would not end a syllable. But why it is forbidden in Spanish too? --40bus (talk) 08:50, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

A couple of explanation options can be found in this thread: [57]. I would mention that you can add sc to your list. An sc- at the start of a Latin word was changed into c- (scientia - ciencia), s- (scio -> se) but also into esc (schola -> escuela, scribo -> escribo). -- 79.91.113.116 (talk) 11:13, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

One might also note the elimination of the Latin -e in infinitives in Spanish and Portuguese (Example: Habere -> Haber, Haver) while Italian kept them. To avoid consonant clusters like -rst-, -rsp-, -rsc- between words which would be a challenge to the Romance tongue, (e.g. atender [e]scuela, observar [e]strellas), the intermittent e may have been required and therefore may have shifted to the beginning of such words. -- 79.91.113.116 (talk) 11:29, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

There are Italian dialects where final wovels of low functional load regularly are dropped, though. It's common in Sicilian, I believe. Also, I'm not sure on whether the two phonetic shifts would be related. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:40, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

It's quite normal in standard Italian to leave the final vowel off of the infinitive auxiliary verbs (or other verbs acting in a quasi-auxiliary role, say in saper vivere). But I don't think that's really what 79.91.113.116 was talking about. Anyway if the main verb starts with s+consonant you can always leave the e on the auxiliary to avoid the cluster, similarly to how a squirrel is uno scoiattolo and not *un scoiattolo.

As a side note, I actually think it's the northern dialects that are more known for leaving off final vowels of ordinary words, particularly Lombardian. I have the notion that Cattivik is Milanese. But I'm not sure of that; I wasn't able to find out for sure with a quick search. --Trovatore (talk) 23:40, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

An AI bot on that Quora link mentions that there are no Latin words starting with st-, I see, which however is blatantly wrong. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:29, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

For whatever reason, it's a part of the Spanish language culture. Even a native Spanish speaker talking in English will tend to put that leading "e", for example they might say "the United Estates". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:42, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

An accent isn't generally considered part of the "culture" in the broader sense. It's not really part of the "English language culture" to refer to a certain German statesman as the "Fyoorer of the Third Rike"... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:26, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

English speakers have typically always mispronounced Hitler's title. In fact, in Richard Armour's satirical American history book, he specifically referred to Hitler as a "Furor". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:29, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

It is kinda proper English, so when I think about it, a better equivalent might be an English speaker talking in German about "Der Fyoorer des dritten Rikeys" or so... (I need to brush up on my German cases...) 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 02:08, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

The reason why they do not occur in these languages is that the native speakers of these languages cannot pronounce onsets like /sk/. The reason why they cannot pronounce these onsets is that they do not occur in their native languages, so that they have not been exposed to them in the process of speech acquisition.  --Lambiam 11:49, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

However, these onsets existed in Latin and disappeared in Spanish so at some point they got lost. See above for a more etymological approach. -- 79.91.113.116 (talk) 11:53, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

It's quite common cross-linguistically to insert a prothetic vowel before some initial clusters. Old French did it (though the /s/ has since often been lost): "étoile"; "escalier"; "épée". Turkish does it: "istasyon". Other languages simplify the cluster: English "knife" /n-/; "pterodactyl" /t-/; Finnish "Ranska" ('France') ColinFine (talk) 14:58, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

The <surname> woman

In a novel I'm reading there are characters who are sometimes referred to as "the Borthwick woman" and "the Pomfrey woman". Nothing exceptional there. But then I got to wondering: why do we never see some male literary character called, say, "the Randolph man" or "the McDonald man"? We do sometimes see "the <surname> person", but never "the <surname> man". Yet, "the <surname> woman" seems fair game.

We also hear these things in extra-literary contexts.

What's going on here? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 10:30, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Traditinal gender roles, I believe. Men inherit their father's surname, while women change theirs by marrying into a new family, on some level being treated as possessions, I guess. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:35, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

A possible reason is that, particularly in former eras, men generally had a particular occupation or role by which they could be referenced, while women often did not, being 'merely' a member of first their parental and later their spousal families. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 13:26, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Another aspect is that these are usually intended as, and understood as, pejorative or disrespectful ways to refer to someone. There's no need to spell it out as, e.g. "that awful/appalling/dreadful Borthwick woman". Those descriptors are understood. How subtle our language can be. I suppose the nearest equivalent for a male referent would be their surname alone, but that would need a context because it wouldn't automatically be taken as pejorative, whereas "the <surname> woman" would. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:25, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

There's also the fact that this is not only understood as a negative towards the woman, but also an insinuation that the man is "lesser" because he can't control "his woman".--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 23:32, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

That hadn't occurred to me. In the book I referred to above, the Borthwick woman is definitely not attached to a man, and the status of the Pomfrey woman is unknown and irrelevant to the story. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 08:13, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Here is a use of "the Abernathy man", here one of "the Babson man", and here one of "the Callahan man". These uses do not appear pejorative to me.  --Lambiam 12:09, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

That sounds not perjorative by avoidance or distancing, but like a "non-definite" (novel? term) similar to "A certain Calsonathy," or "If a man comes by, tell them..." (this a nongendered pronoun regardless of gendered referent; feels newish)

Temerarius (talk) 17:42, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

They were chosen to refer to specific individuals, but for the second I apparently have copied the link to a non-example. For the other two, they are Floyd Abernathy and Leonard Callahan. A better B example is "the Bailey man". Here we do not learn the given name, but he is definitely a specific individual. And here, although we are afforded only snippet views, "the Bailey man" refers to one Dr. Hal Bailey.  --Lambiam 19:11, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Further to Jack of Oz's and Lambiam's observations above [in passing, I can't find the relevant usage in Lambiam's third link], for a male equivalence one might also use near synonyms like 'chap' or 'fellow'. "That Borthwick chap . . ." would be a casual and neutral reference to someone not very well known to the speaker or listener; "that Borthwick fellow . . ." might hint at the speaker's disapproval. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 03:46, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

The use in the third link is the spoken sentence "He works during the day to [sic] the Callahan man that does the carvings." It occurs just above the blank line halfway down the page.  --Lambiam 19:19, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

English vowels

There are some dialects which have /yː/ and /øː/, such as in South African and NZ English, but are there any dialects that have /ʏ/ and /œ/? --40bus (talk) 14:24, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

There are some examples listed in the relevant IPA articles. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:45, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

January 1

Fraction names

How do English speakers say fractions of units? For example, is 50 cm "half a metre", and 150 cm "one and half metres"? Does English refer to a period of two days as "48 hours"? Is 12 hours "half a day", 36 hours "one and half days" and 18 months "one and half years"? --40bus (talk) 10:49, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Yes to all, except that it would be "one and a half" rather than "one and half". Shantavira|^{feed me} 12:26, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

(edit conflict) One does not say "one and half metres" but "one and a half metres". One can also say "one and a half metre" or "one metre and a half". Likewise for "one and half days/years". In "two and a half metres", one only uses the plural form. Note that "48 hours" can also be used for any 48-hour period, like from Saturday 6am to Monday 6am.  --Lambiam 12:31, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Is then 75 minutes "one and a quarter hours"? Is 250,000 "a quarter million"? --40bus (talk) 15:20, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

In British English at least, 75 minutes = one and a quarter hours, or an hour and a quarter; 250,000 is a quarter of a million, or two-hundred-and-fifty thousand. Bazza 7 (talk) 15:36, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Also in British English, "eighteen months" would be more usual than "one and a half years". It's common to give the age of babies as a number of months until they reach the age of two. Alansplodge (talk) 16:49, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

All those usages are also found in America English. Also "a quarter million" is not uncommon in casual speech whereas "a quarter of a million" sounds formal. However, "three quarters of a million" is the only correct way to refer to 750,000 with this idiom though the 's' in quaters is often not audible. Eluchil404 (talk) 23:36, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

In Finnish it is common to give age of one-year-old babies as mixed years and months, such as "yksi vuosi ja kuusi kuukautta" ("one year and six month")? Puolitoista vuotta is very commonly used to mean 18 months. Also, puoli vuorokautta is 12 hours and puolitoista vuorokautta 36 hours. Does English use day to refer to thing that Finnish refers as vuorokausi, i.e., a period of exactly 24 hours (1,440 minutes, 86,400 seconds), starting at any moment and ending exactly 24 hours later? --40bus (talk) 18:09, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

In English ages between one and two years are more often given in months than mixed months and years. I.e. "18 months" is more common than "a/one year and six months" but both are heard. A one day period is more often called 24 hours because "day" would be ambiguous. "One day later" could mean any time during the next day. But using "one day" or "exactly one day" in that meaning would not be obviously incorrect either. Eluchil404 (talk) 23:36, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

The two pronunciations of Hebrew letter Het in Ancient Hebrew?

The Hebrew letters Het and ayin had two different pronunciations each in Ancient Hebrew: the Het could be pronounced like Arabic Ha or like Arabic kha while ayin could be pronounced like Arabic ayin or like Arabic ghayin.

For ayin the clue that this was the case is the transcription into Greek (e.g. in the Septuagint) of Hebrew words like the names Gaza, Gomora, etc. compared to modern Hebrew Aza, Amora, etc. The Greek gamma is in fact a reflex of the ghayin pronunciation. When the letter was pronounced ayin it was not transcribed, e.g. in Eden.

But how do we know for Het? What are in the Septuagint transcribed Hebrew words that indicate that the letter Het had two pronunciations? In other words what are the two different transcriptions of letter Het in the Septuagint that are a clue to that fact? If I had to adventure a guess I would guess that the pronunciation Het was not transcribed (except possibly for a rough breathing), while the pronunciation khet was transcribed as a khi, but I don't know, and I can't think of any examples, and that's exactly why I am asking here.

178.51.7.23 (talk) 12:28, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Didn't Biblical Hebrew survive as a liturgical language? Maybe that proviced pointers. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:44, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

No, not phonologically. From the point of view of the phonology you're mixing two meanings of "Biblical Hebrew" here. The pronunciation used when the text were composed and the ritual pronunciation of the text nowadays. That has nothing to do with the ancient pronunciation and in fact has developed differently in different traditions (ashkenazi, sefaradi, yemeni, iraqi, persian, etc. none of which preserves the double pronunciation of Het and/or ayin) which obviously cannot all be different and yet be identical to the ancient pronunciation. In any case I now changed "Biblical" to "Ancient". 178.51.7.23 (talk) 12:54, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

The het in הָגָר‎ (Hagar) is not transcribed in the Septuagint: ῎Αγαρ (Agar), while חֶבְרוֹן‎ (Hebron) is transcribed as Χεβρών (Khebrōn).  --Lambiam 13:04, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

In Hagar you don't have a Het (8th letter) but a heh (5th letter). However I think the idea is good. 178.51.7.23 (talk) 13:14, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Oops, yes, mistake.  --Lambiam 13:27, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Did you check the breathing in Greek Agar is soft? I would say that's a surprise. 178.51.7.23 (talk) 13:36, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I did. The Vulgate has Agar. See also Ἄγαρ on Wiktionary. I suspect, though, that when the Septuagint was originally produced, breathings were not yet written.  --Lambiam 13:41, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

חַגַּי‎ (Haggai) is transcribed as ᾿Αγγαῖος (Angaios), Aggaeus in the Vulgate.  --Lambiam 14:09, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Biblical Hebrew#Phonology mentions the pair יצחק = Ἰσαάκ = Isaac vs. רחל = Ῥαχήλ = Rachel with non-intial ח. Another example of initial ח as zero is Ἐνώχ (Enoch) from חנוך. –Austronesier (talk) 16:25, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

This conversation brings up the question "Does the LXX contain transcriptions?"

Temerarius (talk) 18:07, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

What do you mean? 178.51.7.23 (talk) 19:15, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

"Transcription" is perhaps not the right term. We have an article on Latinization of names, but AFAIK nothing similar for Greek. (Hellenization of place names is about a 19th- and 20th-century policy of replacing non-Greek geonyms by Greek ones, such as Βάρφανη → Παραπόταμος.) The Hellenization of Hebrew and Aramaic names in the LXX combines a largely phonetically based transcription of stems with coercing proper nouns into the straightjacket of one of the three Ancient Greek declensions.  --Lambiam 00:46, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Meaning of "fauve" in native French and in Ionesco's "Rhinoceros"?

In his play "Rhinoceros" the Romanian-born French playwright Eugène Ionesco uses the word "fauve" to refer to the rhinoceros as if it just meant "wild animal". I would say no native French speaker would do that: am I right or wrong? To me "fauve" would be used mostly for big cats (tigers, lions, leopards). Maybe for bears and wolves? (Not totally sure though). But "fauve" would never refer to just any large dangerous animal like Ionesco (who was not a native speaker of French) does. What do you say? 178.51.7.23 (talk) 12:42, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Looking up French Wiktionnaire and some French dictionaries, it does indeed seem that "fauve" is an acceptable - albeit perhaps dated - way to refer to ochre or wild animals in general, not a non-native misunderstanding. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:50, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Use of Old Norse in old Rus'?

The first rulers of Rus' were Swedes (the Varangians), for example Rurik and his descendants. Is there a record of when they stopped to speak Old Norse? What are some Old Norse words in Russian that came with the Swedes (as opposed to later borrowings from Swedish possibly)? (I know of Rus' and the name of Russia itself it seems. Any other?) How about Russian personal names that go back to Swedish ones? (I know of Vladimir which goes back to Valdemar. Any other?) 178.51.7.23 (talk) 13:32, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

To start you off, Wiktionary have a Category:Russian terms derived from Old Norse. --Antiquary (talk) 13:45, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

According to wikt:Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/Voldiměrъ, that derivation from Valdemar is something that "some sources speculate", and elsewhere (wikt:Valdemar) the borrowing is claimed to be the other way. ColinFine (talk) 15:09, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

How about Oleg (from Helgi?), Igor (from Ingvar?), and of course Rurik (from ????) Incidentally, is Rurik a name that is still used in Russia these days? 178.51.7.23 (talk) 19:17, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

This whole question is contentious, partly because of the sparsity of sources and partly because of political considerations. Some Soviet historians in Stalin's day appeared to believe that Viking assimilation with Slavic culture had been almost instantaneous because, I suppose, they wanted the foundations of the Russian state and nation to have as little foreign influence as possible. Russian historians still tend to argue for a more rapid assimilation than their Western counterparts do. However, there's a discussion of the language question by Elena A. Melnikova here which concludes that "By the mid-tenth century the Varangians became bilingual; by the end of the eleventh century they used Old Russian as their mother tongue", and my old student copy of E. V. Gordon's Introduction to Old Norse agrees that "the Rus themselves gradually lost their Scandinavian traditions and language; they must have been almost completely merged in the Slavonic people by the beginning of the twelfth century." [58] --Antiquary (talk) 10:02, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

English tenses

Does English ever use perfect instead of imperfect (past) to describe events that happened entirely in the past but still have connections to present time, such as "this house has been built in 1955", "Arsenal has last won Premier League in 2004", "When has Arsenal last won...", "this option has last been used three months ago", "humans have last visited Moon in 1972", "last ice age has ended 10,000 years ago"? And is simple present of verb be born ever used, since birth happen only once? And would sentences like "I am being born", "She is born" and "You are being born" sound odd? --40bus (talk) 18:30, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

No to the first (except among the "unedumacated"). As for the second, I'm not sure this counts, but there is the religious "She is born again." The rest sound bizarre. Clarityfiend (talk) 20:34, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

No, that's not right as the question is stated. It's often fine to use use the present perfect (that's the better term than just "perfect") to describe events that happened entirely in the past. Say I have been promoted to colonel; you can use that if you're still a colonel, even though the promotion itself happened in the past.

What makes those sentences sound wrong is the explicit date on the sentence. That makes it very difficult to use the present perfect in idiomatic English. --Trovatore (talk) 22:40, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

If I study really hard, someday I will become underedumacated. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:04, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Another question: why in English Wikipedia, events listed in year articles are in present tense, but in Finnish Wikipedia they are in past tense? --40bus (talk) 21:06, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Present or past tense is acceptable in English (why, I have no idea). Getting back to the original topic, the title of the first chapter of David Copperfield is "I am born." Clarityfiend (talk) 22:30, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

This is the so-called historical present or narrative present. --Trovatore (talk) 22:37, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

I am pretty sure that there are differences between British and American English in the use of the present perfect vs the simple past in such sentences. In American English all your examples sound wrong and should be simple past "this house was built", "Asenal last won", "When did Arsenal last win", "this option was last used", "humans last vistited", "the last ice age ended". When I see imperfect I thin of the past progressive tense: "was being built", "was winning", "was being used", "were visiting", "was ending" which wouldn't work in your example sentences. But I may be incorrect since my knowledge of grammatical categories is based on Classical Latin rather than modern descriptive linguistics. As for "be born", all your examples are perfectly good English. Eluchil404 (talk) 23:59, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

While I do think BrE uses the present perfect a bit more than AmE, I don't think that's really the issue here. I'm pretty sure (one of our British friends can correct me) that the first, second, fourth, fifth, and sixth example sentences in the original post would also sound odd (if not outright wrong) in BrE. Again, the problem is not the fact that the action is entirely in the past, but that the sentence contains an explicit marker of time in the past (1955, three months ago, etc). The third sentence, when has Arsenal last won, I'm less sure about; I find it marginally acceptable, though it would be much more idiomatic to say how long has it been since Arsenal last won.

As to "imperfect", this is a little complicated. The imperfect tense in Italian, and presumably in the rest of the Romance languages, indicates a continuous or habitual action, or a background description. In Latin it was much the same, whereas the Latin perfect indicates a completed action in the past. The present perfect (or analogous construction) entered Romance languages later, maybe with medieval Latin or some such, and differs from the perfect by the emphasis on the importance of the event to the present time.

In German and English, there was never an imperfect tense per se; it was conflated with the simple past (preterite), which is the closest to the Latin perfect tense. It's true that you can use the past continuous or "would" or "used to" to emphasize certain aspects of the imperfect, but at the simplest level, the Latin perfect and imperfect are merged in English, with the present perfect being distinct from both.

Modern Romance languages keep all three tenses in theory, but usually pick one of present perfect or preterite to use overwhelmingly in practice (alongside the imperfect, so they simplify to two conversational tenses). Both French and the northern varieties of Italian rarely use the preterite in conversation, and I think Spanish (especially Latin American Spanish) rarely use the present perfect. However as far as I know they all use the imperfect and keep it separate, which was one of the hardest things for me to get right learning Italian. --Trovatore (talk) 05:43, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

I think one can say, What have the Romans ever done for us, and when have they done it? Similarly, Sure, Arsenal has won the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, but when has Arsenal ever won the UEFA Cup?.  --Lambiam 12:00, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Centuries

Does English ever use term 2000s to refer to period from 2000 to 2099? Why is 21st century more common? And is 2000s pronounced as "twenty hundreds"? --40bus (talk) 21:03, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

There is some ambiguity with 2000s; it could also refer to 2000 to 2009 (vs. 2010s), so that may be why 21st century is more used. It's pronounced "two thousands". Clarityfiend (talk) 22:35, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

If 1900s is pronounced as "nineteen hundreds", then why 2000s is pronounced as "two-thousands"? And 2000s is sometimes used to represent the century, and the decade could be disambiguated by saying "2000s decade", "first decade of 2000s", with basic meaning being century. --40bus (talk) 07:24, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

It could be, sure. And it is, sometimes. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:04, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

“One thousand nine hundreds” has six syllables, “nineteen hundreds” has four, saving two. “Two thousands” has three syllables, “twenty hundreds” has four, adding one. People just pick the shorter option.

BTW, 2000s refers to the period 2000–2099, but 21st century to 2001–2100. It rarely matters. PiusImpavidus (talk) 11:29, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

xkcd:1849. Nardog (talk) 10:30, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

For me, the '00s (decade) are the "noughties". Probably I would call the '10s the "twenty tens" or "new tens". (Dunno why I feel the need to disambiguate from the 1910s.) Double sharp (talk) 11:59, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

As a side note, I once read (possibly in an SF fanzine) that when Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick co-wrote the film and novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, Clarke expected people to pronounce the title "Twenty-oh-one . . ." (as they do for 1901, for example), not "Two thousand and one . . .". {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 12:03, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

That story sounds familiar. Clark maybe didn't count on the public to keep it simple amid the grandeur, so to speak, of reaching a millennium. There's a late-1940s cartoon called "The Old Gray Hare", in which Elmer is taken into the future. The "voice of God" tells him, "At the sound of the gong, it will be TWO-THOUSAND A.D." That was the predominant media usage by the time it actually arrived. The "Y2K problem" or "Year two thousand problem", for example. By about 2010, the form "twenty-ten" had become more prevalent. As suggested above, one less syllable. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:28, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

December 19

Little Bear 1996 Audiobooks

In 1996 British actor Peter Sallis narrated two audiobooks those being Little Bear and Little Bear's Visit and I've been trying to find if any websites that sell it so I can buy it. Matthew John Drummond (talk) 14:07, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

If any websites sell 'something', they need customers to be able to find them. The 'something' would therefore almost certainly show up in any appropriately-worded web search. If you have web-searched for 'something' and not found it, it's a strong indication that the 'something' is not currently being advertised and/or sold (at least online), either new or (currently) via Ebay and other resale sites. On the latter, of course, any 2nd-hand item might show up at any time. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 20:59, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

December 20

Biggest game between two teams from Indiana ever?

Any candidates other than this Indiana+ND game? Thanks, Abeg92contribs 04:13, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Define "biggest". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:35, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

"Most big" ←136.56.165.118 (talk) 15:37, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Most supercalifragilisticexpialidociously ginormous, of course. What do they teach in school, these days??? Clarityfiend (talk) 21:40, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Most important potential outcome? Largest spectator attendance? Largest combined score? Most hyped in the media? We cannot know what you (or the OP, if different) mean by "biggest" (or "most big") unless you define it. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 20:43, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

In any case, the game turned out to be a lot "bigger" for Notre Dame. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:05, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

The Moonstone characters that die 1972

The Moonstone book appears to have three characters from the book that die and it appears that in the 1972 tv series adaptation less of the characters die so how many of the characters from The Moonstone 1972 tv series adaptation die. Also tell me if I was right saying that three of the characters from The Moonstone book die and if I was right tell me each character from the book that dies as well. Matthew John Drummond (talk) 19:58, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

A question better asked on the Italian Wikipedia, since this Italian-language adaptation was made and broadcast in Italy. It's possible that some responder on this en.Wikipedia Ref desk might be able to find out, but seems to me unlikely. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 20:50, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

However, The Moonstone (1972 TV series) was made by the BBC in English and subsequently shown in the USA by PBS (but I don't know the answer). Alansplodge (talk) 13:01, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Ah, right. I didn't spot this one, because in The Moonstone#Adaptations (where I looked), it's appended to the entry for the 1959 version and thus less noticeable, and the next entry is for the Italian production, which I assumed was the one the OP meant – apologies. Obviously, one would have to both re-read the book (which would take days – it's 450+ pages, nearly 193,000 words) and watch the DVD to work out the answers to the questions, and I do not possess the latter. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 17:39, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

I have now separated the two BBC versions in our article. Alansplodge (talk) 21:40, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

December 21

PEGI "Discrimination"

Have PEGI ever mentioned or otherwise announced why they discontinued their "Discrimination" content descriptor despite?

https://pegi.info/en/search-pegi?q=&age%5B%5D=&descriptor%5B%5D=Discrimination

Looking at their database it was only used on five games from 2004 to 2006 which is miniscule Trade (talk) 02:47, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

https://rating-system.fandom.com/wiki/Discrimination_descriptor Polygnotus (talk) 06:27, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

December 30

What's the difference between a free reed and a beating reed?

I read that although there were so called beating reed instruments in Europe since at least the 14th c. (e.g. the regal) the first free reed instruments only appeared in Europe at the end of the 18th c. (e.g. the harmonium, the accordion, etc.) but I've just realized that I don't even know the difference. Could someone explain? 178.51.7.23 (talk) 12:33, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

This website https://www.patmissin.com/history/whatis.html seems to have an expanded explaination on free vs beating reeda. As I know nothing about the subject I can not judge it. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 19:02, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Possibly the article Reed aerophone and the Template:Reed aerophones with all the links contained in it will help...? --CiaPan (talk) 19:47, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Not all authors use the same definitions, but in this contrast I suppose "beating reed" corresponds mainly to the Hornbostel–Sachs categories 422.1 and 422.2 (the single and double reed instruments, such as the clarinet and the oboe), in which the vibrating single reed beats one edge of the mouthpiece and the vibrating double reeds beat against each other. The "free reeds" are then presumably a combination of category 412.13 (the free-reed instruments, mainly the accordions and harmonicas) and category 422.3, a very small group of Chinese instruments, in which the vibrating reed vibrates freely, not striking anything else.  --Lambiam 14:29, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Are you certain? Aren't the beating reeds Hornbostel-Sachs 412.12 (so called "percussion" reeds defined as "a single lamella strikes against a frame"). In any case where on earth are the reed pipes of church organs and reeds of the regal (a kind of medieval organ with only beating reeds and no pipes)? Couldn't find them either in the file mentioned above or in List of aerophones by Hornbostel-Sachs number. 178.51.7.23 (talk) 15:35, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

As I wrote, different sources have different definitions. The Encyclopædia Brittanica identifies "single reed" with "beating reed".^[59] Other authors distinguish between "single beating reed" and "double beating reed".^[60][61] I can't be certain without seeing the context in which these terms are used, but as far as I'm aware no common current instruments fit Hornbostel-Sachs 412.12. The confusing conceptual duplication of sections 412 and 422 has encountered some criticism, as in the book Reed Instruments: The Montagu Collection: an Annotated Catalogue: "I have taken the liberty of of dividing those instruments which should come together under 412 into their types, taking the concussion reeds (412.11) with the double-reed instruments (422.1), the percussion reeds (412.12) with the single-reed instruments (422.2), the free reeds (412.13) with the free-reed instruments (422.3), and placing the ribbon reeds (412.14) at the end, followed by the category, unrecognised by Hornbostel & Sachs but established by Henry Balfour, of retreating reeds, giving these the new number of 412.15."^[62] Reed organs (and reed pipes of multi-register organs) tend to be free-reed instruments; see the mentions of organs in Free reed aerophone.  --Lambiam 00:34, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Actually List of aerophones by Hornbostel-Sachs number lists under 412.122 "earlier organs", so not empty. Most of the reed pipes (the earlier ones) in normal organs (leaving aside reed organs) are not free reeds. See Reed pipe. Some of them are (cf. their paragraph in that article) but they are a new thing. If we are to believe Pump organ the free reed was introduced in Europe only at the end of the 18th century, yet there have been reed pipes in organs and there have been regals in Europe since as early as the 14th century. That there are terminology and classification issues in organology I can well believe. There are such problems in biology and linguistics so why wouldn't there be in organology. Jeremy Montagu's critique of the usual Hornbostel-Sachs may well be valid. Maybe it does make sense to put percussion reeds with single-reed instruments and get rid of that category. I couldn't say say, since 24 hours ago I had no idea even what a beating reed was. 178.51.7.23 (talk) 06:46, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Not empty, but IMO "earlier organs" cannot be considered common current instruments.  --Lambiam 15:19, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

December 31

Anyone's tried "triple" reeds?

I'm about to experiment with my oboe: I'm planning to insert a little piece of reed between the two reeds of the (European) mouthpiece of my oboe, and then blow and see what happens. (A great December 31st activity!) But before I ruin a good oboe (European) mouthpiece I'd like to know if anyone has tried that already and what happened? 178.51.7.23 (talk) 15:43, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

No idea, but if you're going to fiddle with making/adding a handmade reed, make sure on your inhale you put your tongue forward incase anything comes loose causing you to choke. You could of course, buy a triple reed.

This safety announcement is not endorsed by Wikipedia. Knitsey (talk) 16:10, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Excellent point. Thanks a lot. Gotta make sure I don't swallow that little piece of reed and choke on my experiment. Surely, that would be a bad joke on a December 31st! Are there triple reeds for oboes? Really? 178.51.7.23 (talk) 16:25, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

I played oboe in uni but that was many, MANY years ago. No such thing then but I googled triple reed and yes, you can buy them. Knitsey (talk) 16:31, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

January 1

Joe Bonamassa's "Mind's Eye" starts a lot like some other song?

Joe Bonamassa's "Mind's Eye" (both live and studio) starts really really like some other song by some other artist I can't quite put my finger on. Very annoying. If you get a chance to give "Mind's Eye" a listen see if it rings a bell? Joe Bonamassa seems to like to "borrow" at times: The live version of "This Train" (for example at the Sydney Opera House or at the Red Rocks Amphitheater, in Morrison, Colorado) uses the intro to Jethro Tull's "Locomotive Breath" totally unashamedly. He's not even trying to hide it. Does one pay royalties for this kind of use? The studio version of "This Train" doesn't do that. 178.51.7.23 (talk) 10:47, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Don't recognise it myself, but others might.

Overt 'borrowings' or 'quotations' like this, a variety of tribute, have long been used by classical (in the broadest sense), folk, blues, jazz and rock musicians, and of course Bonamassa works in the blues tradition.

It's usually (in my understanding) considered a compliment to the original composer, and would not usually attract a royalties claim unless the quotation is extensive (in which case the user might well proactively arrange to pay royalties, as they would for a Cover version), or the original's copyright is now owned by heirs or lawyers who might ignore musical tradition and hope to to make easy money. This is distinct from covert and unacknowledged Music plagiarism such as that which was alleged (and ruled to be a 'subconscious copy') for George Harrison's 'My Sweet Lord', for example.

The use of Sampling is another development of this phenomenon, and its legitimacy and legality have been contentous issues.

You've prompted me to think about buying a ticket for Bonamassa's upcoming tour – thanks! {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 11:40, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

"My sweet Lord (do-lang, do-lang, do-lang) / Ah, may Lord (do-lang, do-lang)" etc. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:45, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Converting a speech contour into notes?

Does anyone know of a piece of software that can convert a pitch contour (a continuous pitch trace: speech, or laughter, or whatever) into a discrete sequence of notes. That involves "quantizing" the continuous pitch trace to (say) the frequencies of the chromatic equally tempered scale or any scale of your choice and the durations to some note value of your choice. 178.51.7.23 (talk) 11:19, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

January 2

doctors

for example, dumb woman is faking pregnancy etc.

dumb woman lies about miscarriage.

if doctor’s machine checks dumb woman’s stomach,

can doctor’s machine still prove 100% that dumb woman was never pregnant etc?(124.123.161.159 (talk) 18:25, 2 January 2025 (UTC)).

December 19

Who is the following unknown?

When asked "WHO IS YOUR X?" (X still being unknown to me but is known to the respondents), here are the answers I get:

A answers: "A"

B answers: "C"

C answers: "C"

D answers: "F"

E answers: "F"

F answers: "F"

To sum up, the special phenomenon here is that, everybody has their own X (usually), and if any respondent points at another respondent as the first respondent's X, then the other respondent must point at themself as their X.

I wonder who the unknown X may be, when I only know that X is a natural example from everyday life. I thought about a couple of examples, but none of them are satisfactory, as follows:

X is the leader of one's political party, or X is one's mayor, and the like, but all of these examples attribute some kind of leadership or superiority to X, whereas I'm not interested in this kind of solution - involving any superiority of X.

Here is a second solution I thought about: X is the first (or last) person born in the year/month the respondent was born, and the like. But this solution involves some kind of order (in which there is a "first person" and a "last person"), whereas I'm not interested in this kind of solution - involving any order. 79.177.151.182 (talk) 12:11, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Drummer?  Card Zero  (talk) 14:25, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

The OP also posted this question on the Math desk. What if everyone says "I'm Spartacus!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:30, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

I forgot to add an important point (so I've just added it, thanks to your response): Everybody has their own X (usually). 79.177.151.182 (talk) 14:58, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

What do you mean by "everybody has an X"? A lot of folks have an "ex", but is that what you mean? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:08, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

I mean that everybody has their own X (usually), whether X is one's mayor, or X is the leader of one's political party, and so forth. Additionally, keep in mind that if any respondent points at another respondent as the first respondent's X, then the other respondent must point at themself as their X. 79.177.151.182 (talk) 15:21, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

(ec)The statement "everybody has their own X" makes no sense to me, and I'm a native English speaker. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:36, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

X is the usual symbol denoting an unknown (as in mathematical equations), but here the unknown is a person, like "a mayor", and the like. 79.177.151.182 (talk) 15:42, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

There are too many possible answers that still don't involve order or superiority.

- Translator

- Publisher

- Spokesperson

- Copyeditor

- Cleaner

- Keyholder (person who closes a shop and responsible for turning up in cases of property related emergencies - sometimes it's a manager but sometimes it's merely someone who is willing to stay late or be early)

- Scribe

- Accountant

- Driver

Basically anything where there's a "role" in a group but usually only one (barring circumstances).

What are you hoping to accomplish by asking a question like this? Komonzia (talk) 15:34, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Thx.

Resolved

79.177.151.182 (talk) 15:42, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

I don't believe it. A publisher doesn't have necessarily a publisher, because it normally is not an author. A keyholder could be a trusted neighbour,who doesn't work at the shop and is therefore not its own keyholder (at least in relation to the shop). Of course in relation to its own living quarters mostly everybody is a keyholder, but that was not part of the definition. Even a translator doesn't translate itself when it expresses itself in the foreign language. At least not necessarily. Even a cleaner doesn't necessarily cleans up after itself. I know one! Personally!

When you're satisfied by these examples that don't match your description, then I would like to see the real description. 176.0.128.31 (talk) 08:24, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

So this is interesting linguistically and socially - the use of the word "usually" lets in a lot of the examples given, at least in some societies. However mathematically you are looking for something impossible. Lets assume that everyone has an X (or equivalently ignore those people without an X, who are also no-one's X). The relation partitions the set into subsets (i.e. the subsets include all the elements, and each element is in one and only one subset). Each subset has one self-X call it C for centre, and all the other elements (0 or more of them) point to C. Example, whole numbers under the relation "what is the remainder if you are divided by 5". 5 subsets with C=0, 1, 2, 3, 4. In every case there is a "privileged" centre, whether it would be considered superior, inferior or just special is open to interpretation. You can only have no centres in the case where there are no elements at all. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 21:07, 20 December 2024 (UTC).

This was part of a "designated driver" problem for the ACM programming competition many years ago where a population is made of groups where each group has a designated driver. In the programming problem, the task was to calculate the total number of designated drivers from a sample set within a 95% probability so you know how many cars would be required. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 15:57, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Street View

Why Googlehas not launched Street View in mainland China? There do exist several user-submitted photos, mostly from landmarks and historical cities, but why Google cars have not traveled there yet? How likely is that in 2034, mainland China will have photos by Google cars if Street view is launched there?

And, why South Korea, a country with a large economy and almost no bans, still has large unphotographed areas with most minor cities and major freeways are not photographed entirely? And could North Korea ever get Street View by Google cars? --40bus (talk) 17:54, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Here is some info: Google Street View in Asia There are some places in China where they have it. As to future predictions, Wikipedia can't do that. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:07, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

@40bus: https://webapps.stackexchange.com/a/160276 (and see also my comment below). could North Korea ever get Street View by Google cars That is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future, and anything beyond that is unforeseeable. Polygnotus (talk) 01:12, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

My dream would be every country in the world having full coverage. Is that likely in next 20 years? At least Belarus's lack of Street View should be corrected. I would like to see views from every country. --40bus (talk) 06:21, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

"If wishes were horses...". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:13, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Though a multinational, Google is at base an American company, or at least is perceived as such.

Think about the political tensions between the Peoples Republic of China, and the West in general and the USA in particular. Now ask yourself – how might the Government of China feel about American-controlled spy-cars driving around the whole of China, photographing everything visible? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 20:51, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

That is (obviously) not the reason; your tin foil hat is malfunctioning. The USA does not require something as lowtech as a 360 camera mounted on a car to drive through an area to spy on that area. The reason is that Google does not want to waste its money. And China has a habit of creating local state-owned alternatives to foreign services, allowing those to rip off the foreign tech, and then massively disadvantaging the foreign company. They have done this many times before. Polygnotus (talk) 01:10, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting that the US would want (or need) to do this. I'm asking how the Chinese Government would welcome the appearance of it, particularly in the perception of their own people. International relations and management of internal perceptions are all about opinions, beliefs, and what can be spun, regardless of truth.

Recently, in my own country, Chinese visitors and personnel from an ostensible language school fomented a totally spurious 'incident' at a London railway terminus, by approaching a well-known busker and YouTuber filming his and others' performances on a public piano, and then insisting that he stop filming, complaining to police present that he was violating their rights by filming them. This was not done for any valid reason, but (presumably) to try to manipulate public opinion within China, and create a spurious 'grievance' to use in diplomatic discussions. Such games go on all the time. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 01:36, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm asking how the Chinese Government would welcome the appearance of it I have answered the original question; please don't hijack this thread to ask a vaguely related question and then bring up unrelated stuff (which was not recent but a year ago, and a storm in a teacup, and your conspiracy theory is not supported by evidence). There are plenty of diplomatic incidents between China and the UK; neither side has a need to manufacture one. If you want to ask a new question, please post it in a new section. Thank you, Polygnotus (talk) 01:44, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Telling a user "your tin foil hat is malfunctioning" is offensive, and is by itself a "hijacking" of this section. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:20, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Incorrect (on both counts). And posting 2 conspiracy theories in 1 thread is a clear sign of a malfunctioning tin foil hat. Polygnotus (talk) 02:21, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

If you love the Chinese government so much, maybe you should have your own "tin foil hat" checked for malfunctions. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:49, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for proving my point. The CCP killed insane numbers of people through brutality and incompetence. But we should still call out tin foil conspiracy nonsense. The idea that all conspiracies about the "other" must be true, just because we don't like them, is a very very dangerous one. Just like the idea that everyone who points out that some conspiracies about the "other" are false must be an "other". Polygnotus (talk) 12:07, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Considering Restrictions on geographic data in China, it seems correct to mention the Chinese Government as a cause. Baidu and Tencent have presumably obtained authorization, because they're not foreign organizations. This incidentally functions as protectionism. I tracked the piano thing down to Brendan Kavanagh#St. Pancras Station piano dispute, and I suppose there is a tenuous connection since it involves the UFWD and image rights.  Card Zero  (talk) 03:32, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Google's use of GCJ-02 coordinate data and WGS-84 sattelite images has led to weird results in the past. Polygnotus (talk) 12:12, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

The Surveying and Mapping Law led to 14 companies being given exclusive rights to map China. All local companies. Google Maps applied and was denied. https://interfax.com/newsroom/top-stories/63636/ https://medium.com/@anastasia.bizyayeva/every-map-of-china-is-wrong-bc2bce145db2 Polygnotus (talk) 12:27, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Relations between Google and the Chinese government have been difficult for years. China wants its citizens to see only a censored version of the internet, requiring Google to filter results from its search engine. In case of Street View, the Chinese government is concerned about what their own citizens can see (and I suppose they also want to know who views which streets). Google isn't very eager to comply with all China's request, as that could be quite expensive and bad for their image in less authoritarian states. PiusImpavidus (talk) 19:44, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Why Somalia, Venezuela and Cuba do not have Street View yet? --40bus (talk) 23:38, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

This question can be answered by chatgpt or similar. Or by reading the Wikipedia articles about those countries. Polygnotus (talk) 01:33, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

December 21

Britannica

Why Encyclopaedia Britannica uses imperial units in its articles, ever for things that are measured in metric in UK such as temperatures, if it is based in UK and read by people in metric countries? --40bus (talk) 07:47, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

40bus, it is not based in the UK despite its British sounding name. The Encyclopaedia Britannica has been published in the United States since 1901. That's two years before the first human piloted airplane flight. Cullen328 (talk) 07:57, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Why it is not based in the UK? And if it is read and edited by people in metric countries, why many of its articles use imperial units first? It even uses British English spelling. And are there any similar UK-based online encyclopedias? --40bus (talk) 08:36, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

No. Go be bored somewhere else. Nanonic (talk) 09:27, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

If all else fails, you could try asking them. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:43, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Can't you do that for me??? —Tamfang (talk) 21:47, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Webpages

Are there any web pages from late 1980s and early 1990s that are still in their original address, rather than on Internet Archive? Was it common for a company or person to have website in early 1990s? --40bus (talk) 07:53, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

We have a List of websites founded before 1995. The IN2P3 site from 1992 can still be visited, where you may enjoy seeing the French National Institute for Nuclear Physics and Particle Physics's contact details, a small picture of the building, and five hyperlinks. The article says there were 2,879 websites established before 1995, so no, it wasn't common.  Card Zero  (talk) 09:19, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Were there any websites around in 1990? This year feels still relatively recent. And are there any saved TV broadcasts from that time in the web, from any country? --40bus (talk) 11:47, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Are you just randomly asking questions? Polygnotus (talk) 12:00, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Take the effort to read the first sentence of List of websites founded before 1995 and you will have the answer to your question.  --Lambiam 10:41, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Did Donald Trump's father,

Fred, know Rudy Giuliani's father, who is said to have been a mob contract killer? I'm asking because I've heard rumors somewhere that both Donald and Fred had mob contacts in New York City.Rich (talk) 22:43, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

"Said to have been"; is there a reliable source that claims this? It has also been said that Donald Trump is a shape shifting lizard.^[63] Harold Giuliani was at the bottom of the low end of shady dealings in the Italian immigrant community. It seems extremely unlikely that Fred Trump, a high-profile successful real-estate developer from the German immigrant community, would have a reason to meet him.  --Lambiam 10:38, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Well, that's what the OP is asking. You're just repeating the OP's question using different words. --Viennese Waltz 10:52, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

The OP did not ask whether it was plausible but whether it was true. Even if the mob contract killer story should prove more than randomly created innuendo, there is still nothing to suggest the two fathers ever met. The suggested mob contacts would not make this more likely than two random New Yorkers (like Henri who sometimes ordered pizza and Freddy who sometimes delivered pizza) knowing each other. It is very difficult to prove a negative, but the question implied the OP thought it was at least plausible, which, as I tried to point out, it is not.  --Lambiam 01:09, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

No insult intended to shape-shifting lizards. Clarityfiend (talk) 10:50, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

(it's easy for you to google that the rumors are out there, Lambiam.Rich (talk) 18:59, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

I did not dispute the rumours exist, but IMO they are irrelevant to the question whether the two fathers knew each other, so I ignored them.  --Lambiam 01:09, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Giuliani gave a eulogy and he probably would have mentioned it if they knew eachother, but it doesn't seem like he did. https://nypost.com/1999/06/30/trump-patriarch-eulogized-as-great-builder/ Polygnotus (talk) 18:22, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

https://stevevillano.medium.com/the-trumps-an-incestuous-intertwining-with-organized-crime-ab65316c2b48

Rich (talk) 19:30, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for finding this, Polygnotus. But are you sure Rudy would have mentioned it in his eulogy, being possibly embarrassed about his father's occupation? And mentioning an acquaintance with his father would not make Fred seem more illustrious, which eulogies are meant to do. Rich (talk) 19:03, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

No, I haven't found definitive proof. Polygnotus (talk) 12:08, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

December 22

Policy related to places

Hello,

I want to add an article for a place in delhi cantonment. However, i am unsure about the relevant Wikipedia policies on this topic. I tried searching on DuckDuckGo to no avail And the results of Wikipedia search gave unrelated things. What are the relevant policies? KhubsuratInsaan (talk) 11:16, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

You may find this guide a good starting point. Be sure in particular to study the section on notability. You may also want to look up articles about similar places (if those articles exist) and review them to get a sense of what does and does not go into such an article.

It looks like you're new to Wikipedia. (Welcome!) You may find it easier to write an article from scratch and get it past article review or new pages patrol if you spend some time here first editing other pages and getting to understand the culture. That's not a strict requirement, just something a lot of people benefit from when they first arrive! -- Avocado (talk) 14:28, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

And the place for new editors to ask questions is the Wikipedia:Teahouse (although we're happy to help here too, especially with references). Alansplodge (talk) 15:24, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

thank you. i will keep this in mind next time i want to ask a question. KhubsuratInsaan (talk) 12:56, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

thank you for the detailed reply ❤️ KhubsuratInsaan (talk) 12:56, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Indian city classification

I was looking at Classification of Indian cities. In tier Y, there are more than 100 cities listed. But in the reference given there are only 88. I even looked what appears to be official website, there's no new circular of new list. [64] Are there any other circulars or should I just remove extra cities. Also, as my main purpose to look for a tier classification, was to use it as approximation for urban (Tier X and Y) and rural districts (Tier Z). Is there any other department which does this kind of classification, please let me know. -- Parnaval (talk) 17:13, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

That circular by the Department of Expenditure indicates that classification of cities depends on the latest census. Entities using the classification after yearly update seemingly are easy to find ( https://7thpaycommissionnews.in/classification-of-indian-cities/), regarding a specific source explicitly mentioning their is an update the department link to look for has to be related to the census. --Askedonty (talk) 21:28, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

December 27

Black Cube, Melissa Nathan,&U.S. presidential candidates

Black Cube has a wikipedia article, Melissa Nathan is mentioned in the article It Ends with Us. Both are googleable. My question is if either Black Cube or Melissa Nathan were ever hired to discredit John Kerry or Hillary Clinton? I realize that in Melissa Nathan's case, if she had been hired for that, it would probably have been before she formed The Agency Group PR.Rich (talk) 06:52, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

The link should have been to It Ends with Us (film).  --Lambiam 19:16, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Griggsville, Missouri?

The Robert Fiske (actor) article claims (without a source) that he was born in Griggsville, Missouri. I can find no evidence whatever that such a place has ever existed. There is a Griggsville, Illinois, which is about 20 miles northeast of the IL/MO border (which I think is the river, and presumably was in 1889). Was there really a Griggsville in Missouri, or is this a simple mistake? The only substantive author (to the biographical part of the article) is long departed Wikipedia. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 20:12, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

I can't find an obit for Fiske in Newspapers.com, and the Findagrave entry [65] simply says he was born in Missouri. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:37, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

[Edit Conflict] I wondered if it might be something to do with the Mississippi changing its course, but it seems not. However, if Griggsville, Illinois is correct, he could be added to that article's Notable person [sic] section, doubling its complement!

The 'Missouri' inclusion was (as you may have noted) in the article as created in 2005, so at least we know it's not the result of vandalism.

I notice that the Unreliable sources IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes and the Internet Broadway Database also state Griggsville, Missouri, which may of course have been taken from Wikipedia, and Find a Grave gives merely Missouri. However, The Movie Database does give Griggsville, Illinois. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 21:42, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Indications in Ancestry.com are that he was merely born "in Missouri", not a specific city that I've found. Even though the original article writer has been offline for over 9 years, maybe his email still works? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:54, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm wondering if there is some circular WP:CITOGENESIS between ourselves, Findagrave, and IMDb. I too considered the "moving river" hypothesis, but it's much too far away. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 22:42, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Who Was Who on Screen (1977) confirms he was born in Griggsville, Missouri. No danger of citogenesis there. The search term "Griggsville, MO" throws up a few non-Fiske results on Google and Google Books, but I can't find precisely where it is. --Antiquary (talk) 09:22, 28 December 2024 (UTC) Ah, here we are, it's in Pike County, Missouri [66]. --Antiquary (talk) 10:00, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Griggsville, IL, is also in Pike County, Illinois and if you look up the zip code (62340) given on that web site you also land in Illinois. The two Pike Counties are direct neighbours, but there's no indication of any common history or even a shift in the state border. --Wrongfilter (talk) 10:15, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

That sounds ominous. Also, the more of my Google and Google Books hits I follow up, the fewer check out. The evidence that this place ever existed outside of Fiske's say-so looks rather slight. Here is one cite from 1907, and there are one or two more from the 19th century, but confusion with Griggsville, IL can't be ruled out. --Antiquary (talk) 10:46, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks everyone. I'll flag the birthplace in the article is questionable (and the whole article as poorly sourced), but I think there's enough uncertainty for me to not "fix" it. And I'll refer to this discussion on the talk page, for the (probably very unlikely event) that some future person cares enough about this rather minor actor to do more thorough research. Thank you. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 08:04, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

One thing I noticed in Newspapers.com is that Missouri papers that referred to Griggsville usually made it clear that they were talking about the one in Illinois. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:08, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

December 28

Why do news reporters name the programme they are reporting for?

This is an example by BBC News. ―Panamitsu (talk) 05:44, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

You have linked to a BBC TV program where at 0:40 the presenter introduces "Our science correspondent Pallab Ghosh" who signs off his report "Pallab Ghosh, BBC News". His report includes statements by two experts each identified by name and affiliation. The video typifies the high standard of jounalism where BBC emphasize distinction between source and editorial content. Incidentally, a good BBC TV reporter tends to become a "household name" (the likes of Clive Myrie, Fiona Bruce, Sophie Raworth, Reeta Chakrabarti, Steve Rosenberg, Michael Buchanan and more). Edit: I apologise to Pallab Ghosh for initially misspelling his name and thank Antiquary for correcting me. Philvoids (talk) 11:19, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Pallab Ghosh, but I'm sure he's used to it. --Antiquary (talk) 11:29, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

As I understand the question, it is not why reporters identify themselves, but why for instance Ghosh does not sign off by simply saying "Pallab Ghosh", full stop.  --Lambiam 10:29, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

It's a standard practice, which might even be in their contracts. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:55, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

I seem to recall American channels using clips from the BBC. Such sign offs would serve to identify the source in these cases.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 17:22, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

THat was my thinking, too. These days they tend to have on-screen watermarks, but reporters still sign off with "Jennifer Superior Bitch, Infinity News. Alex". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:55, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Navigation lights

Does the fact that aeroplane/ship navigation lights are green and red cause problems for pilots who are red-green colour blind? How do they deal with that? Can they even become pilots? ―Panamitsu (talk) 22:49, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

I couldn't be a pilot because of my red-green colour blindness, but people with a mild version can apparently - this is a link to the UK's Civil Aviation Authority's guidance on colour vision requirements. Mikenorton (talk) 23:25, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

How fascinating. Thanks. ―Panamitsu (talk) 00:21, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Similarly, red-green colourblind people may not be able to become helmsmen.

You might think it would have been more convenient to make those lights red and cyan, as far fewer people are red-blue colourblind, but when navigation lights on ships were introduced, bright blueish lights couldn't be made. That only became possible with gas discharge lamps. Traffic lights and railway signals these days (often using LEDs) use a slightly blueish green, so that most colourblind people can see the difference between red and green. PiusImpavidus (talk) 11:55, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

They could have agreed (and still could agree) on assigning distinct flashing patterns, like •••—— and —••—• .  --Lambiam 20:48, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Flashing patterns would be a very poor method for aircraft and probably ships also. Navigation lights are meant to give a quick indication of the relative position and heading of another aircraft/vessel. When seeing navigation lights a pilot instantly has an indication of the relative flight direction of the other aircraft based on which red/green/white lights are visible. Also there are already the anti-collision lights, red flashing beacon on the tail at least and white flashing strobes on the wingtips and tail. How could a pilot possibly decode flashing lights reliably enough and quickly enough to determine relative heading? fiveby(zero) 18:06, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Wouldn't that be a problem because the sky/ocean is blue? I understand that the lights are used at night so it shouldn't be too much of a problem. ―Panamitsu (talk) 22:39, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

It would involve more complex lighting circuits/equipment and massive world-wide retrofitting, which (I suggest) would be prohibitively expensive, to solve a relatively minor 'problem' more easily answered by simply not employing colour-blind people in the relevant positions. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.223.204 (talk) 13:12, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Flashing lights have been used on lighthouses for a long time. They use an assembly of lenses and shutters rotating around a fixed light, using a low-friction bearing. This works fine for stationary lighthouses, but is more problematic on moving ships. There's more wear and the lens assembly could jam or rotate at variable speed. Better to use an electric light, switched repeatedly by a rotating switch powered by an electric motor (all available late 19th century), but both switch and lamp have to switch reliably at least a million times. No problem today, but there's still the issue of recognising a flashing pattern if it's intermittently obscured. It's considered acceptable for lighthouses and buoys, which are usually more or less where you expect them to be, but a moving ship may be a different matter. PiusImpavidus (talk) 14:45, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

When I answered telephones and sold passenger tickets for Eurostar I had to pass an Ishihara test, the same as signalmen and train drivers. DuncanHill (talk) 21:27, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Depending on the signalling system, train drivers may also have to discriminate red from yellow/amber. This is less important for road users. And states of tracks and signals are colour-coded on the computer monitors of signalmen, but it should only take a simple software update to accommodate colourblind signalmen. (Yes, there're still some old-fashioned signal boxes in some countries; I've passed the one at Severn Bridge Junction on my way to Wales.) I don't see the objection against colourblind ticket sellers. PiusImpavidus (talk) 11:58, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

December 29

Domains

Are Eritrea's .er and Belarus's .by ever used in domain hacks? .er could be used in shortcut to Blogger, blogg.er, like goo.gl and youtu.be, and .by could be used in domains such as drive.by and in Nordic place namesmas by means "village" in Swedish and "city" in Norwegian and Danish. And can South Africa's .za and India's .in be used directly after the main part, such as in piz.za and drive.in? Also, can .pl, .cz, .sk and .hu addresses contain diacritics, such as gdańsk.pl, česko.cz, košice.sk and magyarország.hu? --40bus (talk) 10:10, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

See URL#Internationalized URL. PiusImpavidus (talk) 11:30, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Plusimpavidus has only answered the last sentencee.

The answer to the first part is entirely dependent on the policy of the controller of the ccTLD in question, and that controller may or may not publish a policy. Technically, of course they could be used: the government of Tonga sells .to domains to any interested party, as I presume you know.

According to our article .by The Operations and Analysis Centre under the President of the Republic of Belarus allows for anyone (not only for those who reside in Belarus) to register a second level domain such as something.by, and it also says he .by code is used for domain hack by institutions from the German state of Bavaria (German: Bayern), such as bayern.by, the Bavarian Tourism Agency. Since "by" means "town" or "city" in Norwegian, it's also used by some Norwegian newspapers, such as osl.by for an Oslo newspaper, and trd.by for a Trondheim newspaper, however, neither of these statements appear to be sourced. When I just tried it, trd.by seems to redirect to a Norwegian casino site.

Our articles .er and .za say nothing about whether the ccTLDs are available to anybody outside Eritrea and South Africa respectively. .in doesn't explicitly address the question, but in talking about the use of subdomains it repeats "in India" several times. ColinFine (talk) 20:38, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Colored asphalt markings

What's the purpose of such blue, green, pink marks on street grounds? I've seen them in multiple places in Warsaw (typically in non-traffic places, such as sidewalks) where they've stayed for several months or even years without being erased. From what I've read, those marks can be made for some roadworks, but I'm not sure. Brandmeister^talk 20:06, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

I've seen them used for several purposes, mostly for marking the course of some underground pipe or cable, but also for marking a distance such as 500m from a given spot. In the first case, there is a sequence of similar markings, not too far apart from each other. In the second case the marking is usually accompanied by a number or some code.  --Lambiam 20:55, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

See utility location. --142.112.149.206 (talk) 22:09, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

In my experience (UK) they appear in preparation for invasive ground works, most recently in our road prior to the installation of the third set of broadband cables under our pavement. Apparently, existing suppliers and their customers get sniffy if new upstart suppliers not only add their own cables, but put a shovel through the existing cables in the process! Different colours may denote gas, water and telecommunication lines.

There is also an occasional rash of markings that outline potholes; whether this is done to guide the repairers of potholes, or as a placebo to pacify local road users, is not always clear. It is possible that the process accompanies the calculation of a cost for the work; the expenditure may not be forthcoming. -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 21:24, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks all. Brandmeister^talk 11:31, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

January 1

Peugeot's rivalry

Did Peugeot have any rivalry with other auto manufacturer that became famous or was famous but forgotten, like Lancia and Audi in 1983 and Ford and Ferrari in the 1960s? --Donmust90-- Donmust90 (talk) 19:15, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

When does competition rise to the level of rivalry? Peugeot was unexpectedly beaten in speed by Panhard et Levassor in the Paris–Bordeaux–Paris race of June 1895.  --Lambiam 00:07, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Peugeot, Citroën, Renault and Simca were the big four French automakers post World War II - and therefore rivals. The first two have merged, Renault is still around, but Simca has disappeared. Xuxl (talk) 11:40, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

While the Simca brand, after having been acquired first by Chrysler and then PSA Peugeot Citroën, has disappeared, the factory in Poissy that Simca acquired from Ford France in 1954 is still in full operation.

The Lancia–Audi and Ford–Ferrari rivalries alluded to in the question were not about rivalry between companies, but rivalry between racing teams; see Race for Glory: Audi vs. Lancia and Ford v Ferrari.  --Lambiam 16:03, 2 January 2025 (UTC)