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Computing

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December 30

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

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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)[reply]

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)[reply]

Windows 10 Bin

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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)[reply]

C:\$Recycle.Bin has the recycle bins for all users. Yours will appear with the normal name and icon, the others will appear as the Security Identifier of the respective account. If you click on the one for your account, it should show the same contents (note Windows Explorer shows the files which are in the recycling bin - it does not show the actual files storing the data used by the recycling bin). As for why they are different, it's hard to say without more information. If you delete something, does it appear in both or just one? Thanks 2603:6011:9440:D700:2080:28C1:577E:41B3 (talk) 23:26, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]


January 1

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Question(s) about Arch Linux

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@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)[reply]

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)[reply]
@Vitorperrut555 TheTechie@enwiki (she/they | talk) 00:41, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
68.187.174.155, I think you're confused. Archinstall is a command on Arch Linux, and the Arch Installer boots in text mode. You may be thinking of an Arch derivative like Manjaro or EndeavourOS, which do indeed boot up in graphical environments. TheTechie@enwiki (she/they | talk) 20:23, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 2

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Bayeux Tapestry website

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What image-serving technology is the new Bayeux Tapestry website using, and how can high-res images be downloaded? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:59, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Pigsonthewing Welcome to the Reference Desk for Computing. Are you trying to download all images, or only specific ones? If you reply here, please ping me. Thanks, TheTechie@enwiki (she/they | talk) 00:54, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The former preferably, but an answer for either would be of interest, as the technology is likely in use elsewhere. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:46, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
According to their terms of use, "Access to this panorama is free for a private or public non-commercial use. Any commercial use of this tool is prohibited, as well as the extraction of images from this panorama" (my emphasis). This may or may not bother you. Chuntuk (talk) 18:24, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Even more, the "images" which get loaded are tiled portions of the actual image. TheTechie@enwiki (she/they | talk) 19:11, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]


January 4

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Zoomify

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Is it possible to download the map La ligne de démarcation that is shown via Zoomify?--Antemister (talk) 22:48, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, if you google "download zoomify image" you will see various ways. Polygnotus (talk) 23:44, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, of course I googled before and found that but was not successful. So I asked here.--Antemister (talk) 11:31, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Please mention what you've already tried before and what did not work and what happened instead (e.g. error messages). Polygnotus (talk) 04:57, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Tried [2] and of course also the dezoomify tool but got immediately stuck because I was not able to find an URL. Very few programming skills, none regarding HTML, that's why I ask here.--Antemister (talk) 10:46, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Antemister:
I wasn't able to download the file as it was taking forever, but this URL appeared to download the files for 30+ minutes on a fast internet. Let us know if this works. TheTechie@enwiki (she/they | talk) 03:19, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've successfully taken images off the IWM via their source code and dezoomify, but I'm puzzled as to how to extract images here, as Dezoomify appears to be perpetually stuck on 'preparing tiles load'. The longest I've seen it take for large images in the past is a couple of minutes. Like Antemister, I've little programming knowledge, but I think the following elements in the code are related:
<script type="text/javascript" src="ZoomifyImageViewerFree-min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript"> Z.showImage("myContainer", "images/France_LD"); </script>
On going to http://cartesmich.free.fr/images/France_LD/ I get error 403. Perhaps this website is savvy about theft of its most high-resolution public domain images. Maybe someone has the patience to hunt about in the browser console. JayCubby 04:51, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If they're public domain images, it's not "theft". Please avoid such misleading and perjorative language. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:52, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's still potentially in violation of their ToS (not that I much care) and could, per my reading of my law (assuming this is an american website, which it isn't) run afoul of something like the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

The ToS is a reasonable concern, which is why I said theft. JayCubby 15:53, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Even if all you say were true (It's highly doubtful; there appear to be no published terms of service - much less any that a user agrees to before viewing the site; and in any case we are not all in the USA), it's still not theft. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:11, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You're right--there are no terms (though the host website, free.fr, appears to have a TOS page). JayCubby 16:53, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I came to that cited code, but had no idea to open that container Also tried again dezoomify, and also waited a long time, and after 1-2 hours i get an error message. And it includes a link, [3], if you alter the numbers you can find various tiles of the map.is it possible to proceed with that, download that folder?--Antemister (talk) 22:34, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm! So I pasted this conversation into ChatGPT, and told it to generate code for use in Google Colab. The code is here (it doesn't really do what it's supposed to, at all, but a start).
The really screwed-up image it generated is here. Hopefully these are of help to someone with more Python experience than I.JayCubby 02:35, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I gave this another try. This time it was able to actually download the image correctly, but only a horizontal section. The code is collapsed below. I think it needs only some slight tweaking.

Extended content

import os ::import requests ::from PIL import Image ::# Base URL and directory setup ::BASE_URL = "http://cartesmich.free.fr/images/France_LD/TileGroup8/" ::OUTPUT_DIR = "tiles" ::MERGED_IMAGE = "merged_image.jpg" ::# Ensure the output directory exists ::os.makedirs(OUTPUT_DIR, exist_ok=True) ::# Function to download a tile ::def download_tile(url, save_path): :: response = requests.get(url) :: if response.status_code == 200: :: with open(save_path, "wb") as f: :: f.write(response.content) :: return True :: return False ::# Function to stitch the tiles together ::def stitch_tiles(tiles, tile_size): :: max_x = max(x for x, y in tiles.keys()) + 1 :: max_y = max(y for x, y in tiles.keys()) + 1 :: # Create a blank canvas for the final image :: merged_image = Image.new("RGB", (max_x * tile_size, max_y * tile_size)) :: # Paste tiles onto the canvas :: for (x, y), tile_path in tiles.items(): :: tile_image = Image.open(tile_path) :: merged_image.paste(tile_image, (x * tile_size, y * tile_size)) :: return merged_image ::# Set parameters for downloading tiles ::tile_size = 256 # Assume each tile is 256x256 ::x_range = range(36, 50) # Adjust based on your needs (x-coordinate range) ::y_range = range(24, 40) # Adjust based on your needs (y-coordinate range) ::# Dictionary to store downloaded tile paths ::downloaded_tiles = {} ::# Download tiles ::for x in x_range: :: for y in y_range: :: tile_url = f"{BASE_URL}6-{x}-{y}.jpg" :: tile_path = os.path.join(OUTPUT_DIR, f"6-{x}-{y}.jpg") :: if download_tile(tile_url, tile_path): :: downloaded_tiles[(x - min(x_range), y - min(y_range))] = tile_path :: print(f"Downloaded: {tile_url}") :: else: :: print(f"Tile not found: {tile_url}") ::# Stitch the tiles into a single image ::if downloaded_tiles: :: merged_image = stitch_tiles(downloaded_tiles, tile_size) :: merged_image.save(MERGED_IMAGE) :: print(f"Merged image saved as {MERGED_IMAGE}") ::else: :: print("No tiles were downloaded!")

-- JayCubby 16:09, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, again some progress! What horizontal slide? Maybe iterate through the TileGroup folders?--Antemister (talk) 16:56, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
User:Antemister, it was one of the bottom sections of the map, I have some silly 2FA on my devices and can't access the one I ran it on for a couple of hours. You should be able to run the above code in Colab and ask ChatGPT (or Gemini) for further help. JayCubby 17:02, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
First heard about Colab but tried, and it seems the Code does something. What is the Folder you got the files downlaoded?--Antemister (talk) 17:30, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Antemister In a new cell, type from google.colab import files files.download('merged_image.jpg') Apologies for putting all of this inside a hat template, I can't figure out how to correct it. JayCubby 18:15, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Again progress, have gotten such a merged image that shows a part of the map. The iteration is just a guess... Shouldnt there be a possibility to list all the files in the folder?--Antemister (talk) 22:58, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Antemister, I very nearly got it to work, the final image is 12,000x12,000px but has errors. import os
import requests
from PIL import Image
from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor
  1. Base URL and output setup
BASE_URL = "http://cartesmich.free.fr/images/France_LD/"
OUTPUT_DIR = "tiles"
MERGED_IMAGE = "merged_image.jpg"
  1. Ensure output directory exists
os.makedirs(OUTPUT_DIR, exist_ok=True)
  1. Function to download a tile
def download_tile(group, x, y):
url = f"{BASE_URL}TileGroup{group}/6-{x}-{y}.jpg"
save_path = os.path.join(OUTPUT_DIR, f"TileGroup{group}_6-{x}-{y}.jpg")
try:
response = requests.get(url, timeout=10)
if response.status_code == 200:
with open(save_path, "wb") as f:
f.write(response.content)
print(f"Downloaded: {url}")
return (group, x, y, save_path)
else:
print(f"Tile not found: {url}")
except Exception as e:
print(f"Error downloading {url}: {e}")
return None
  1. Function to download all tiles (no detection, brute force)
def download_all_tiles(groups, x_range, y_range):
tiles = []
print("Starting brute force tile download...")
with ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=10) as executor:
futures = []
for group in groups:
for x in x_range:
for y in y_range:
futures.append(executor.submit(download_tile, group, x, y))
for future in futures:
result = future.result()
if result:
tiles.append(result)
return tiles
  1. Function to stitch tiles together
def stitch_tiles(tiles, tile_size):
if not tiles:
print("No tiles to stitch.")
return None
  1. Determine the range of x and y coordinates
all_coords = [(x, y) for _, x, y, _ in tiles]
min_x = min(x for x, y in all_coords)
max_x = max(x for x, y in all_coords)
min_y = min(y for x, y in all_coords)
max_y = max(y for x, y in all_coords)
  1. Create a blank canvas for the final image
width = (max_x - min_x + 1) * tile_size
height = (max_y - min_y + 1) * tile_size
merged_image = Image.new("RGB", (width, height))
  1. Paste tiles onto the canvas
for group, x, y, tile_path in tiles:
tile_image = Image.open(tile_path)
merged_image.paste(
tile_image, ((x - min_x) * tile_size, (y - min_y) * tile_size)
)
return merged_image
  1. Main script execution
tile_size = 256 # Assume each tile is 256x256
groups = range(0, 16) # TileGroup0 to TileGroup15
x_range = range(0, 50) # x-coordinates: 0–49
y_range = range(0, 50) # y-coordinates: 0–49
tiles = download_all_tiles(groups, x_range, y_range)
  1. Stitch the tiles into a single image
if tiles:
merged_image = stitch_tiles(tiles, tile_size)
if merged_image:
merged_image.save(MERGED_IMAGE)
print(f"Merged image saved as {MERGED_IMAGE}")
else:
print("No tiles were downloaded!") JayCubby 03:31, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Here's the link. https://limewire.com/d/50995585-f881-4ff5-9186-e0eb55978a5e#Tcw-4kZBQKVH0GS9yZPb-vUvH8t-V04gV-t8MQp8O7k JayCubby 03:38, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, that is sufficient, what I need is the ceasefire/demarcation line. Can you sent me the code with correct formatting? Maybe I can use it in future, to download other zoomified images.--Antemister (talk) 14:18, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Here you are: https://pastebin.com/gPKrd1cj JayCubby 18:04, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]


January 12

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Science

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December 29

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

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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)[reply]

'kinetic velocity' is just 'velocity'. 'potential velocity' has no meaning. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:56, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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 would be constant. catslash (talk) 18:54, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. HOTmag (talk) 20:07, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
'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)[reply]
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)[reply]
It is true, not only for harmonic oscillators, provided that you define vpot = − vkin.  --Lambiam 09:07, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • 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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]

December 30

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Saltiness comparison

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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)[reply]

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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]

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

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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)[reply]

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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]

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

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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)[reply]

Schwarzschild solution. --Wrongfilter (talk) 21:05, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, its the Juan Maldacena's accent which made me post here. HarryOrange (talk) 21:18, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December 31

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Brightest spot of a discharge tube

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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)[reply]

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

January 1

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Two unit questions

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  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 "23 km", "512 kg", "3+16 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)[reply]

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)[reply]
In Finland, kaapelinmitta is 185.2 m. Is there an English equivalent? --40bus (talk) 18:11, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Cable length. --Wrongfilter (talk) 18:26, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Good article. I was wrong Greglocock (talk) 22:26, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The answer can be found by looking up kaapelinmitta on Wiktionary.  --Lambiam 00:14, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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

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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)[reply]

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)[reply]
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) [reply]
In the UK nowadays, are cars still mostly manual transmission, or has automatic become the norm? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots12:38, 2 January 2025 (UTC) [reply]
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)[reply]
This may be tied to the rise of EVs, since they have automatic transmissions by default. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 05:29, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In Australia, we drive on the left, and the indicator and wiper stalks are the opposite way to the UK. Having moved back from the UK after 30 years, it took me a while to stop indicating with wipers. TrogWoolley (talk) 05:08, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This depends more on where the car came from I think. For European or American cars it tends to be in the UK direction. For Asian cars or I guess those odd Australian made cars which are out there, it tends to be in the other. See e.g. [7]. The UK being a bigger market I think most manufacturers have come to follow the new UK norm for cars they intend to sell there [8] [9] [10] [11] although I suspect to some extent it's still true in the sense that I think most Asian car brands, at least assemble their cars in the EU or maybe the UK if they're destined for the UK (made a lot of sense pre-Brexit) [12]. It sounds like the new UK norm is fairly recent perhaps arising in the 1980s-1990s after European manufacturers stopped bothering changing that part of the production for the reasons mentioned by Philvoids. As mentioned in one of the Reddit threads, the UK direction does make it difficult to adjust indicators while changing gear which seems a disadvantage which is fairly ironic considering the the UK has much more of a preference for manuals than many other RHD places with the other direction. Nil Einne (talk) 04:31, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For further clarity, AFAICT, LHD vehicles generally have their indicators on the left and wipers on the right. As mentioned, assuming the gear stick is in the middle which AFAIK it is for most cars by now, this seems the better positioning especially on manual cars since you're much more likely to want to need to indicate while changing gear than you are going to want to adjust your wipers even in the rainy UK. The UK being LHT/RHD especially with their own manufactured cars tended to have the indicators on the right and wipers on the left in the more distant past so again the positions that made most sense.

While I don't have a source for this going by the history and comments, it sounds to me like what happened is European manufacturers who were primarily making LHD vehicles, with the UK and Ireland their main RHD markets but still small compared to the LHD market stopped bothering changing positions for RHD vehicles as a cost saving measure. So they began to put wipers on the right and indicators on the left even in their RHD vehicles no matter the disadvantage. I'm not so sure what the American manufacturers did or when and likewise the British but I think they were a fairly small part of the market by then and potentially even for them LHD was still a big part of their target market.

Meanwhile Asian manufacturers however still put their indicators on the right and wipers on the left in RHD vehicles, noting that Japan itself is LHT/RHD. I suspect Japanese manufacturers suspected, correctly, that it well worth the cost of making something else once they began to enter the LHD markets like the US, to help gain acceptance. And so they put the indicators on the left and wipers on the right for LHD vehicles even if they did the opposite in their own home market and continued forever more. Noting that the predominance of RHT/LHD means even for Japanese manufacturers it's generally likely to be their main target by now anyway.

Later I assume South Korea manufacturers and even later Chinese felt it worth any added cost to increase acceptance of their vehicles in LHT/RHD markets in Asia and Australia+NZ competing against Japanese vehicles which were like this. And this has largely continued even if it means they need to make two different versions of the steering column or whatever. It sounds like the European and American brands didn't bother but they were primarily luxury vehicles in such markets so it didn't matter so much.

This lead to an interesting case for the UK. For the Asian manufacturer, probably many of them were still making stuff which would allow them to keep putting the indicators on the right and wipers on the left for RHD vehicles as they were doing for other RHD markets mostly Asian. And even if they were assembling them in the EU, I suspect the added cost of needing to ship and keep the different components etc and any difference it made to the assembly line wasn't a big deal.

So some of did what they were doing for the Asian markets for vehicles destined for UK. If they weren't assembling in the EU, it made even more sense since this was likely what their existing RHD assembly line was doing. But overtime the UK basically adopted the opposite direction as the norm no matter the disadvantages to the extent consumers and vehicle enthusiast magazines etc were complaining about the "wrong" positions. So even Asian manufacturers ended up changing to the opposite for vehicles destined to the UK to keep them happy. So the arguably better position was abandoned even in cases where it wasn't much of a cost saving measure or might have been even adding costs.

Nil Einne (talk) 05:43, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

One thing I didn't consider when writing above is how often the steering column or whatever for Asian manufacturers is actually produced in the EU rather than simply shipped there after production elsewhere. That would likely mean producing two would likely incur more additional cost even if the same thing in two versions is produced elsewhere for use in the Asian market. I still think the main reason Asian manufacturers stopped using the opposite location/direction in the UK is primarily one of consumer demand, but it's true that it's fairly complicated. Nil Einne (talk) 10:28, 10 January 2025 (UTC) [reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
My first car, a Hillman Minx, had the gearstick on the left and the handbreak on the right, which was a bit of a juggle in traffic. Alansplodge (talk) 19:13, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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

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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)[reply]

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)[reply]
Supposing the photograph has high enough resolution to show Sunspots it can be helpful to know that the pattern of spots at sunrise is reversed left-right at sunset. Philvoids (talk) 13:21, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
At the equinox, the disk of the Sun with its pattern of sunspots appears to rotate clockwise from sunrise to sunset by 180 degrees minus twice your latitude (taking north positive). At my place, that's 75 degrees. Other times of the year it's less; at the start and end of polar day and polar night, there's no rotation. Sunset and sunrise merge then.
And I forgot to mention: cirrostratus clouds will turn red just after sunset or just before sunrise. At the exact moment of sunrise or sunset, they appear pretty white. PiusImpavidus (talk) 17:06, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I differ: the same rotation is involved everywhere on Earth. If you stand on tiptoe at a N. or S. pole to take a picture of the Sun it is you who must pirouette 15 degrees per hour to keep facing the Sun. The Earth rotates you at this rate at all non-polar locations. If you stand within the arctic or antarctic circles, for parts of the year the 24-hour night or 24-hour daylight seem to prevent photographs of sunrise or sunset. However the terms "sunrise" and "sunset" can then be interpreted as times that are related to particular timezones which are generally assigned by longitude. In photographing the 24-hour Sun the equatorial rise and set times for your own longitude are significant elevation maxima worth mentioning even though the minimum elevation remains above the horizon. I maintain that the sunspot pattern observed from any location on Earth rotates 360 degrees per 24 hours and that "night", the darkness from sunset to sunrise, is when the Earth's bulk interrupts one's view of the rotation but not the rotation itself which is continuous.
Taking the Earth as reference frame, the Sun rotates around the Earth's spin axis. The observer rotates around his own vertical axis. The better both axes are aligned, the smaller the wobble of the Sun. In the northern hemisphere, it rotates clockwise from about 6 till 18 by 180 degrees minus twice your latitude and counterclockwise at night, in the southern hemisphere it's the opposite. Try a planetarium program if you want to see it. Stellarium shows some sunspots, does things right and is free and open source. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:27, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Relationship between Earth's axial tilt (ε) to the tropical and polar circles
We deprecate the obselete Geocentric model and suggest Wikipedia references that are free and just one click away (no extra planetarium software needed). The axes of rotation of the Sun and Earth have never in millions of years aligned: the Ecliptic is the orbital plane of Earth around the Sun and Earth currently has an Axial tilt of about 23.44° without "wobbling" enough from this to concern us here. Philvoids (talk) 14:56, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't my field but sunspots aside, if you know the location and date, I assume the appearance of other astronomical objects like the moon or rarely another star probably Venus, in the photograph should be enough to work out if it's a sunset or sunrise. That said, to some extent by taking into account other details gathered from elsewhere's I wonder if we're going beyond the question. I mean even if you don't personally know which is east or west at the time, if you can see other stuff and you know the location or the stuff you can see is distinctive enough it can be worked out, you can also work out if it's sunset or sunrise just by working out if it's east or west that way. Nil Einne (talk) 03:54, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In my experience (Southern England) they tend to be pinker at dawn and oranger(!) at dusk. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 03:23, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Pink clouds must result from blending of reddish clouds with the blue sky behind. There's actually more air between the observer and the clouds than behind the clouds, but for that nearby air the sun is below the horizon. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:27, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The questioner asks for interpretation of a single picture. It is beside the point that more would be revealed by a picture sequence such as of changing cloud colours. Philvoids (talk) 12:41, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Recalling Leonard Maltin's comment about the Green Berets movie, which was filmed in the American state of Georgia: "Don't miss the closing scene, where the sun sets in the east!" ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots22:37, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Which you can only tell if you know which way is east in the image. Maltin, or his writer, appears to have assumed that Vietnam has a seacoast only on the east, which is wrong. --142.112.149.206 (talk) 03:46, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Georgia has only an eastern seacoast. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots10:31, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Black seas matter! Philvoids (talk) 14:18, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So what. Bugs? The claim is about the setting, not the filming location. --142.112.149.206 (talk) 07:30, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But as it was filmed in (The US State of) Georgia, it must actually show a sunrise, regardless of what the story line says – how do you know that wasn't what Maltin actually meant? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 10:35, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I assume (not having seen the film) that, in the story line of The Green Berets , the closing scene takes place in the late afternoon, which means it shows a sunset. The plot section of our article on the film places the closing scene at or near Da Nang, which is on the east coast of Vietnam. This means that Maltin did not make an unwarranted assumption; he was just seeking an excuse to bash the film.  --Lambiam 13:55, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've seen The_Green_Berets and confirm that the closing scene with End title is an offshore sunset. Philvoids (talk) 20:12, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 6

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Does the energy belonging to an electromagnetic field, also belong (or is considered to belong) to the space carrying that field?

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HOTmag (talk) 18:41, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It would be unusual to express the situation in such terms. Since the notion of energy "belonging to" some entity is not itself a physical concept – any practical approach to energy bookkeeping that satisfies the law of conservation of energy will do – this cannot be said to be wrong. It is, however, (IMO) not helpful. Does an apple belong to the space it occupies? Or does that space belong to the apple?  --Lambiam 23:37, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
First, I let you replace the notion of energy "belonging to" some entity, by the notion of energy "attributed to" some entity, or by the notion of energy "carried by" some entity, and the like. In other words, I'm only asking about the abstract relation (no matter what words we use to express it), between the energy and the space carrying the electromagnetic field, rather than about the specific term "belong to".
Second, I'm only asking about what the common usage is, rather than about whether such a usage is wrong or helpful.
The question is actually as follows: Since it's accepted to attribute energy to an electromagnetic field, is it also accepted to attribute energy to the space carrying that field?
So, is your first sentence a negative answer, also to my question when put in the clearer way I've just put it? HOTmag (talk) 03:28, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The answer remains the same. It would be a highly unusual use of language to "attribute" electromagnetic energy to a volume of space, in quite the same way as it would be strange to "attribute" the mass of an apple to the space the apple occupies. But as long as an author can define what they mean by this (and that meaning is consistent with the laws of physics), it is not wrong.  --Lambiam 13:21, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
An electromagnetic field that we may (even tenuously) conceive to have the form of a massless photon has, like the aforementioned apple (a biological mass) its own unique history, that being a finite path in Spacetime. I reject apparent effort to give spacetime any kind of identity capable of owning, or even anticipating owning or remembering having owned anything at all. Concepts of owning12, attributing3 or whatever synonymous wordplay one chooses all assume identification that can never be attached to the spacial location of an em field. The energy of the photon is fully accounted for, usually as heat at its destination, when it is absorbed and no lasting trace remains anywhere. I am less patient than Lambian in my reaction to this OP who under guise of interest in surveying "what is commonly accepted" returns in pursuit of debate by patronisingly "allowing" us to reword his question in abstract "words that don't matter" to make it purportedly clearer and worth responders' time. Philvoids (talk) 14:55, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you Lambiam for your full answer. I always appreciate your replies, as well as your assuming good faith, always. HOTmag (talk) 15:08, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]


January 8

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Australian for double-decked bridge?

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On a topographic map (or on any other kind of map, like a track diagram), what symbol represents a railroad bridge which is directly above and collinear with another railroad which is either on a lower deck of the same bridge, or else is at grade (as in, for example, a narrow-gauge line on a coal trestle above a standard-gauge one)? 2601:646:8082:BA0:48AA:9AA4:373D:A091 (talk) 06:35, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Our List of multi-level bridges#Australia article only lists two multi-level bridges in Australia, neither of which seem to fit your criteria. Alansplodge (talk) 19:16, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Clarification: in this case, "Australian" is meant figuratively (as in that Fosters ad) -- what I was really asking was the representation of such a bridge on a map. 2601:646:8082:BA0:48AA:9AA4:373D:A091 (talk) 01:03, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What Fosters ad? That link doesn't help, and Australians don't drink Fosters, so won't have seen any ad for it. HiLo48 (talk) 01:15, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Nonsense. I have it on good authority—Fosters own ads on TV in the US two decades ago—that all Australians do nothing but drink Fosters all day because it is the one true Australian beer. DO NOT ARGUE WITH YOUR CAPITALIST OVERLORDS' CULTURAL APPROPRIATION! Um, I mean, Foster's Lager had a bunch of ad campaigns promoting their image as being Australian. See its article for details. Search youtube for fosters australian to see some examples. DMacks (talk) 01:28, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Nit pick, at grade means at the same height, you mean grade separated. Greglocock (talk) 05:32, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's all grade-separated (rail-line vs rail-line). I assume they mean one rail-line is on the ground (in contrast with being on a bridge as the first example). The term is annoying, but we're stuck with terms like at-grade railway. DMacks (talk) 05:38, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, in this case "at grade" means at ground level -- with the narrow-gauge line on the trestle directly above it! 2601:646:8082:BA0:48AA:9AA4:373D:A091 (talk) 06:25, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Only example of a multi-level bridge or viaduct I've found so far in the world having a WP article is Highline Bridge (Kansas City, Kansas). DMacks (talk) 06:32, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There is one on the Driving Creek Railway (no photo of this detail in the article, but a few in c:Category:Driving Creek Railway). I've seen mentions of some others that are long-gone (or have one or both levels now used for other modes). Lots of pictures of old New York City have an el with rails in the street under it, but nothing still existing or in-use. DMacks (talk) 07:25, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Right, so how would one show such a bridge on a map? 2601:646:8082:BA0:48AA:9AA4:373D:A091 (talk) 22:51, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly the same as a map would indicate a railway under a roadway or a roadway under a railway (or anything under anything), of which there are numerous examples on maps, i.e. the lower railway disappears under the upper railway and then reappears at the other end of the bridge. Shantavira|feed me 10:27, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! Which would actually make it easier if the two railroads are of different gauges and one of them is at grade, as in my (fictional) example (I'm currently mapping the station layouts on the North Western Railway for a possible scenario pack for Train Sim Classic and/or Train Sim World, and there's a setup just like I describe at Arlesburgh West -- the narrow-gauge Arlesdale Railway goes up on a coal trestle above an at-grade siding of the North Western) -- in that case, the standard-gauge line goes under the ends of the bridge lengthwise and disappears, while the narrow-gauge line remains continuous on the bridge deck, and because they have different symbols there's no confusion! 2601:646:8082:BA0:48AA:9AA4:373D:A091 (talk) 22:11, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]


January 11

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Pork belly and microwaves

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Why does pork belly always seem to pop in a microwave whenever I cook it in there? It also splatters, too, which creates a mess I have to clean up. Kurnahusa (talk) 02:53, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Boiling of intracellular fluid? 2601:646:8082:BA0:48AA:9AA4:373D:A091 (talk) 07:10, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with the IP. Also food in a microwave should always be covered. Microwave plate covers are widely available. Shantavira|feed me 09:52, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Which bird species?

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Bird from Brenman Park, Alexandria, Virginia, February last year.

I found this picture on Commons. Is this really a mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)? We have lots of mallards here in Sweden where I live, and nor male or female looks like that.

I'm sure it belong to Anseriformes, yes... but what kind of bird species?

// Zquid (talk) 21:48, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A female gadwall seems most likely, although a lot of female dabbling ducks are rather similar. Mikenorton (talk) 23:31, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Which primate species?

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Info from Flickr images says this is purple-faced langur...

I found this picture on Commons. Description says Purple-faced langur, and so did the category. I changed the category to Semnopithecus vetulus, but I'm not sure the picture shows Purple-faced langur/Semnopithecus vetulus.

Can someone tell me what kind of primates?

// Zquid (talk) 21:59, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Going by the long nose and concave facial profile, that looks to me like a macaque. In fact, based on the ludicrous hairstyle, the first second last on the list, Toque macaque, is indicated. It is endemic to Sri Lanka like the Purple-faced langur. These individuals in the picture do have very purple faces, I must admit. Perhaps it was mating season and they go like that? But monkeys tend to send that kind of signal via the butt, not the face. Our article says "With age, the face of females turns slightly pink. This is especially prominent in the subspecies M. s. sinica", so I suppose that could be it.
It was convenient that this species was wrongly sorted to the top of the alphabetical list.  Card Zero  (talk) 01:30, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Flying off to infinity in a finite time

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In "Newton's law of motion", chapter Singularities we find this text: "It is mathematically possible for a collection of point masses, moving in accord with Newton's laws, to launch some of themselves away so forcefully that they fly off to infinity in a finite time."

How can one write such a thing, when by definition infinity has no limit and whatever the speed of a point mass, it will therefore never reach infinity, that is to say a limit that does not exist? Malypaet (talk) 22:07, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Did he actually refer to his own work as "Newton's laws"? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots23:16, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at the citation, we find an article entitled "Off to infinity in finite time".[13] I didn't find it at all answers your question, though. What does it mean? --jpgordon𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇 02:48, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 12

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Mathematics

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December 31

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

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For a consisting of points in R^2, define the function B such that as the Union of and all points which can be produced in the following way. For each set of points A, B, C, & D from 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 = the vertices of a regular Pentagon centered at 0,0 with one vertex at (1,0), does there exist N such that 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)[reply]

I think you meant to write  --Lambiam 07:55, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Changed to use the Math.Naraht (talk) 14:37, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
Here is one point other than the origin (in red)
If there is one such point, there must be an infinite number of them. catslash (talk) 22:52, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just to be clear, the black points are the original pentagon K, the green points are in B(K), and the red point is the desired point in B2(K); the origin is not shown. It would be nice to find some algebraic criterion for a point to be constructible in this way, similar to the way points constructible with a compass and straightedge are characterized by their degree over Q. --RDBury (talk) 01:45, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Once you have a second one (such as the reflection of the red point wrt the x-axis), you have all intersections of the y-axis with the non-vertical lines through pairs of distinct points from  --Lambiam 16:22, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
RDBury *headslap* on (0,0) Any idea on y<>0? (← comment from Naraht)
See the above construction by catslash.  --Lambiam 16:12, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The red point is at , . catslash (talk) 16:18, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 1

[edit]

What is the first number not contained in M136279841?

[edit]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]
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)[reply]
To be fair, this depends on being able to find the digits on-line. To compute them from scratch just for this question would be more trouble than it's worth. But I take your point; it probably takes more computing power to stream an episode of NUMB3RS than to answer this question. My problem with the question is that it's basically a dead end; knowing the answer, is anyone going to learn anything useful from it? I'd question the inclusion of A268068 in OEIS in the first place simply because it might lead to this sort of boondoggle. But far be it for me to second guess the OEIS criteria for entry. --RDBury (talk) 01:13, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
OEIS includes similar sequences for the positions of the first location of the successive naturals in the decimal expansions of (A088576), (A032445) and (A229192). These have at least a semblance of theoretical interest wafting over from the open question whether these numbers are normal.  --Lambiam 06:21, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To compute them from scratch just for this question would be more trouble than it's worth.
Eh, I agree that the question is of little fundamental interest. However, it's not much work to compute M136279841. It is of course absolutely trivial to compute it as a binary number. The only real work is to convert it to decimal. I wrote a program to do this using the GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library. It took about 5 minutes to write the program (since I've never used that library before and had to read the manual) and 29 seconds to run it. CodeTalker (talk) 18:06, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Right, convert from binary, somehow I didn't think of that. Basically just divide by 10 41 million times, which would only be an issue if it was billions instead of millions. --RDBury (talk) 06:21, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]


January 5

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Reference request:coherence condition (adjoint functor)

[edit]

Previously, in WPM (Coecke and Moore (2000)) taught me a statement of coherence condition for adjoint functors. This is sometimes called triangle identities or zigzag identities, and I'm looking for some references. I am also trying to find where to find the Wikipedia article that explains coherence conditions (adjoint functors). Also, I'm looking for a Wikipedia article that explains coherence conditions (adjoint functors). (e.g. coherence condition, adjoint functor, or new draft ?)

  • "triangle identity". ncatlab.org.
  • Ben-Moshe, Shay (2024). "Naturality of the ∞-categorical enriched Yoneda embedding". Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra. 228 (6). arXiv:2301.00601. doi:10.1016/j.jpaa.2024.107625.
  • Borceux, Francis (1994). Handbook of Categorical Algebra: Basic category theory. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-44178-0.
  • Coecke, Bob; Moore, David (2000). "Operational Galois adjunctions". arXiv:quant-ph/0008021.
  • planetmath

SilverMatsu (talk) 02:41, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Can you identify more precisely for which statement(s) you want a reference? Is it for the definition of counit–unit adjunction given in section Adjoint functors § Definition via counit–unit adjunction?
Explanations in mathematics can be of different kinds. One kind are explanations of definitions. Definitions are true by definition; an explanation generally means helping build up an intuition of the concept defined by showing familiar structures satisfying the definition. Another kind are explanations of statements. These typically offer a reformulation of a statements as an equivalent statement in terms of simpler concepts. Then there are explanations of proofs. These can include showing the proof "in action" on specific examples, using familiar structures as when explaining definitions. And they can assist in verifying the validity of proof steps, by unfolding definitions until the step becomes obvious. In general, all explanations can involve a combination of these.
For example, in our article Adjoint functors, the ramifications of the definition in the lead section, basically the existence of a bijection that is natural in and are not immediately obvious, but by carefully unfolding the definitions, starting with the required naturality of the two morphisms making up the bijection, leads to the equivalent counit–unit definition.
I am not sure what kind of explanation of "coherence conditions (adjoint functors)" you are seeking. Perhaps studying this article, "Adjunctions", will answer this question.  --Lambiam 12:18, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the reply. I will read the article you recommended and study from it. Specifically, I am looking for some references to add the examples given in the WPM to the examples of coherence condition. Also, I think counit–unit addition is itself might be a topic on which to create a standalone article. SilverMatsu (talk) 05:30, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My immediate reaction is that it is better to leave the treatment of the counit–unit definition to the article Adjoint functors. The terms "hom-set adjunction" and "counit–unit adjunction" suggest these are special kinds of adjunction, but this terminology is IMO misleading. What is defined there is each time precisely the same concept of adjunction as in the other definitions. All three definitions are fully equivalent. They are just different ways of looking at the same situation. The parable of the blind men and an elephant could be the story of the mathematicians and the adjoint situation.  --Lambiam 11:43, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the reply. I think that it would be better to add an explanation to the article that these three definitions are equivalent.
The section Formal definitions has stated that there are three equivalent definitions since August 2018. I have removed the (IMO) confusing terminology from that section, although it can still be found further on, in a part that seems to just reiterate earlier material.  --Lambiam 12:28, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Concatenation of first 10 digits and last 10 digits of a number

[edit]

Let a(n) be the concatenation of first 10 digits and last 10 digits of n, then we know that a(2136279841-1) = 88169432759486871551, however:

  1. Can a(2^n) take all 20-digit values which are multiples of 1024?
  2. Can a(3^n) take all 20-digit values which are odd?
  3. Can a(n^2) take all 20-digit values which end with 0, 1, 4, 5, 6, 9?
  4. Can a(n^3) take all 20-digit values?
  5. Can a(prime number) take all 20-digit values which end with 1, 3, 7, 9?
  6. Can a(lucky number) take all 20-digit values which are odd?
  7. Can a(Fibonacci number) take all 20-digit values?
  8. Can a(partition number) take all 20-digit values?
  9. What is a(9^9^9^9)?
  10. What is a(9^^9), where ^^ is tetration?
  11. What is a(9^^^9), where ^^^ is pentation?
  12. What is a(Graham's number)?
  13. What is a(TREE(3))?
  14. If we know a(x), assume that x has at least 20 digits, can we also know a(2*x), a(3*x), etc.?
  15. If we know a(x), assume that x has at least 20 digits, can we also know a(x^2), a(x^3), etc.?
  16. If we know a(x) and a(y) as well as the number of digits of x and y, can we also know a(x+y)?
  17. If we know a(x) and a(y) as well as the number of digits of x and y, can we also know a(x*y)?
  18. If we know a(x) and a(y) as well as the number of digits of x and y, can we also know a(x^y)?

220.132.216.52 (talk) 08:33, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The answer to 2 is easily "no". Powers of 3 are not divisible by 5, so their decimal representations cannot end on a 5. Five seconds of considering the question should suffice to figure this out.
The answer to 14ff is also no:
Put and
Then but
Again, I think a beginning recreational mathematician should be able on their own to come up with this easy counterexample.
I do not find these particular questions interesting. Still, let me reflect on how questions 1–8 might be approached.
To start, the formation of a -digit string is a red herring. It is conceptually cleaner to consider pairs of -digit strings, such as (8816943275, 9486871551).
One can pose two related questions for each sequence under consideration:
  1. Ini: does each -digit string appear as an initial segment of the decimal expansion of some sequence element?
  2. Fin: does each -digit string, with the exclusion of some as specified, appear as a final segment of its decimal expansion?
These are necessary but not sufficient conditions for the joint occurrence of all combinations, but easier to study. If either one can be shown not to hold, the answer is no. Otherwise, if no proof of any of the two can be found, the question cannot be settled. Finally, if both can be shown to hold, it is at least plausible that the proofs will provide enough material to settle the original question.
As to the Ini question, it is unlikely that an affirmative answer depends on the particular number . If Ini holds for a given well-known mathematical sequence, Ini will almost certainly hold for any length This is then equivalent to the statement that a given sequence satisfies (For the notation see Little-o notation.)
Similarly, if Fin holds for a given well-known mathematical sequence, Fin will plausibly hold for any length The Fin question can therefore tentatively be generalized to:
Are, for any given modulus the residue classes modulo of sequence all classes not already excluded by the specified exclusions?
Note, though, that the generalization may fail to hold for some modulus while Fin holds. For example, for any So it is no longer a necessary condition and may need further finessing before application.  --Lambiam 00:28, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, the first 4 questions should be:
  1. Can a(2^n) take all 20-digit values which are multiples of 1024 and not multiples of 5?
  2. Can a(3^n) take all 20-digit values which end with 1, 3, 7, 9?
  3. Can a(n^2) take all 20-digit values which are quadratic residues mod 1010?
  4. Can a(n^3) take all 20-digit values which are neither == 2, 4, 6 mod 8 nor == 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, …, 115, 120 mod 125?
220.132.216.52 (talk) 01:14, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
12. It seems no one knows what the first digit of Graham's number is, let alone the first 10.
13. Similar situation.
GalacticShoe (talk) 15:53, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
9./10./11. I would wager that finding these would be extremely difficult. Normally if one has a large number , then one can hope to find the first few digits by taking , with the hopes that will be small/amenable to calculation, with a precise fractional part. For example, has log , which is small () and thus has a precise fractional part () which, when fed back into the power of 10, yields us the first few digits without having to calculate the 369 million-digit itself. Unfortunately, is not such a case; the log itself now has 369 million digits, so calculating the fractional part accurately would be a nightmare. For similar reasons, 10. and 11. would also seem to be extraordinarily difficult. GalacticShoe (talk) 00:47, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
1./2. All numbers that are multiples of 1024 and not of 5 are the last 10 digits of some power of 2, as for all coprime to 5, there is some such that . Moreover, for the modulos with respect to are periodic with some minimal period, say , so that all applicable modulos appear once in the period of consecutive powers of 2.
Suppose now that we fix two distinct 10-digit strings and , the former to represent the first ten digits we want of our desired power of 2, and the latte - divisible by 1024 and not by 5 - to represent the last ten digits. Let be the minimal power of that has as its last ten digits; all the numbers we are looking for are then of the form where . What it means for our first ten digits to be then, is that there is some such that:
.
This is equivalent to:
.
Notice that is irrational. It is a bit overkill, but we can apply the equidistribution theorem here and note that there will always be some value of with a corresponding value of large enough such that the aforementioned equality holds, and also . Consequently, there must be some values of and that yield a power of 2 starting with A and ending with B. The same logic applies to . GalacticShoe (talk) 00:26, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
3./4. If we look at squares, then we have instead of , and the inequality becomes
.
While logs are not equidistributed modulo 1, this does not present a problem; because tends to 0 as n goes to infinity, there will always be some point where, informally, cannot "jump the gap" between and . When that happens, we get a square that starts and ends with our desired string. The same logic applies to cubes and all functions (yielding the desired ending substring) where or equivalently . GalacticShoe (talk) 01:37, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
7. The approach with exponentials can actually help us with Fibonacci numbers, as
.
All we have to do is use the Pisano period and add a fixed amount of leeway for the minuscule (which tends to 0, so any tiny threshold suffices), at which point the equidistribution theorem again applies. GalacticShoe (talk) 01:51, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
5. Based on our previous conversation, yes.
6. If our previous conversation on lucky numbers is anything to go by, it seems unlikely that enough is known to even ascertain whether there are infinitely many lucky numbers satisfying congruence mod 10^10.
8. Like the last question involving partition functions, and like with lucky numbers, without further information on their congruences it seems unlikely that we'll have a satisfactory answer to this.
GalacticShoe (talk) 02:19, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To summarize:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7: yes
6, 8: unclear
14, 15, 16, 17, 18: no
9, 10, 11, 12, 13: too large to calculate
GalacticShoe (talk) 02:22, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For polynomials you can use  --Lambiam 02:39, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So for 9 to 13, the first 10 digits are not known, but are the last 10 digits known? 220.132.216.52 (talk) 04:22, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I found the answer of 9, it is 21419832941045865289, see (sequence A243913 in the OEIS). 220.132.216.52 (talk) 05:43, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Another question: Are a(2^n) and a(3^n) periodic sequences (or eventually periodic)? 220.132.216.52 (talk) 05:45, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No, this is excluded by the equidistribution theorem. Precisely because is dense in there will be pseudoperiodicities. For example, is approximated by , so there will be a similarity between the initial digits of and those of The first two digits of go like
while those of go like
Eventually there will be arbitrarily long initial strings repeated arbitrarily often, but each run will eventually end with a discrepancy.  --Lambiam 12:38, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]


January 8

[edit]

Even Fermat pseudoprimes

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There are infinitely many odd numbers which are Fermat pseudoprimes to all bases coprime to them (the Carmichael numbers), but it seems that all even numbers > 946 are Fermat pseudoprimes to at most 1/8 for the bases coprime to them, is this proven? (Like that all odd numbers are strong pseudoprimes to at most 1/4 for the bases coprime to them) 220.132.216.52 (talk) 12:40, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth, any counterexample >28 must have the form where p and q are distinct odd primes such that is divisible by both and . Tito Omburo (talk) 18:55, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is it true that using the rectifying latitude with the best sphere radius (possibly not the same radius for all 3) minimizes the worst-case error for distance (%), distance (km) & max km the 2 paths get from each other? (maximum separation between the great circle & the geodesic for the surface of the WGS84 ellipsoid)? Or is another latitude better like the geocentric latitude? (the geocentric latitude can get ~0.2° from the (by far) most kind of used latitude which is more separation than any kind of latitude (besides the Mercator one that's 0° to ∞°)) What's the best radius for each of these 3 metrics & how well do the worst point pairs for these 3 metrics approximate the ellipsoidal trigonometry answer? (the one where the geodesic latA lon A alt0 to latB lonB alt0 is considered perfect accuracy even though most places aren't on the 2D surface) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 22:56, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]


January 10

[edit]

Knot equivalence

[edit]

Our knot theory article gives two definitions, asserted to be equivalent, for when one knot is equivalent to another. Both of these involve auto-homeomorphisms of .

To me this just kind of feels -- heavy. To move one trefoil knot to another, verifying their equivalence, I apparently have to account for all the rest of space. Is this actually necessary?

Concretely, suppose I define knot equivalence as follows. If and are two knots, defined as continuous maps from [0, 1] into that are injective except that (), then say and are equivalent if there is a continuous map from into such that:

  • the map equals
  • the map equals
  • for , the map is injective except that

Is this notion of equivalence the same as the one in the article? --Trovatore (talk) 07:01, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Since no intersects itself, my intuition tells me there ought to be a lower bound on how close it can come to self-intersection. More precisely, the boundary of the Minkowski sum of and a constant ball with a sufficiently small (-independent) radius should be a torus. Proving this formally may not be easy, but a proof will establish the required ambient isotopy.
If your conjecture is indeed correct – I'm hedging my bet because counterexamples in topology can be quite counterintuitive – it would be amazing if your markedly simpler characterization is not found in the literature.  --Lambiam 10:20, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think knot (lol). I believe any nontrivial not is "injectively homotopic" to the unknot. Start with your favorite knot and stretch one arc while compressing the rest so that in the limit the compressed part tends to a point. This can be done injectively. Tito Omburo (talk) 12:03, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, that sounds right. Thanks. --Trovatore (talk) 18:22, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
With the R3 embedding definition you can definitely say that if the complements are not homeomorphic then the knots are inequivalent. That's a useful property since you may be able to show that two knots are different without having to go into the details of knot theory, in fact you can show the trefoil knot is not the unknot with a little algebraic topology. In practice, two knots are equivalent if their diagrams can be transformed into each other by a sequence of Reidemeister moves, so the problem is really to find an intuitive definition that's equivalent. As Lambiam pointed out, topology can be counterintuitive, and perhaps "injectively homotopic" = "homotopic" is an example of that. --RDBury (talk) 00:40, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Think yourself lucky. Maybe. When I had a look at knot theory a while ago the definition was in terms of a finite set of straight lines and Reidemeister moves, and things like infinite knots were an extension. And then there were the extensions like knotting a sphere in 4d. NadVolum (talk) 14:50, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]


January 12

[edit]

Humanities

[edit]

December 29

[edit]

Set animal's name = sha?

[edit]

"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)[reply]

Which article does that appear in? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots01:18, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It must be this article. Omidinist (talk) 04:22, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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? carrots05:00, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Each time, the word šꜣ is written over the Seth-animal.[14]
  • Sometimes the animal is designated as sha (šꜣ) , but we are not certain at all whether this designation was its name.[15]
  • 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.[16]
  • šꜣ ‘Seth-animal’[17]
  • He claims that the domestic pig is called “sha,” the name of the Set-animal.[18]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
SAAE12
 
E12
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)[reply]
Budge's original drawing and second version of PharaohCrab's drawing; the original looked very different, and this one is clearly based on Budge's as traced by me in 2009, but without attribution.
The article—originally "Sha (animal)" was one of the first I wrote, or attempted to write, and was based on and built on the identification by E. A. Wallis Budge, in The Gods of the Egyptians, which uses the hieroglyph
M8
for the word "sha", and includes the illustration that I traced from a scan and uploaded to Commons (and which was included in the article from the time of its creation in 2009 until December 21, 2024 when User:PharaohCrab replaced it with his original version of the one shown above; see its history for what it looked like until yesterday). I have had very little to do with the article since User:Sonjaaa made substantial changes and moved it to "Seth animal" in 2010; although it's stayed on my watchlist, I long since stopped trying to interfere with it, as it seemed to me that other editors were determined to change it to the way they thought it should be, and I wasn't sophisticated enough to intervene or advocate effectively for my opinions. In fact the only edit by me I can see after that was fixing a typo.
As for the word sha, that is what Budge called it, based on the hieroglyph associated with it; I was writing about this specific creature, which according to Budge and some of the other sources quoted above has some degree of independence from Set, as it sometimes appears without him and is used as the determinative of one or two other deities, whose totemic animal it might also have been. One of the other scholars quoted above questions whether the word sha is the name of the animal, but still associates the word with the animal: Herman Te Velde's article, "Egyptian Hieroglyphs as Signs Symbols and Gods", quoted above, uses slightly modified versions of Budge's illustrations; his book Seth, God of Confusion is also quoted above, both with the transliteration šꜣ, which in "Egyptian Hieroglyphs" he also renders sha. Percy Newberry is the source cited by the Henry Thompson quotation above, claiming that sha referred to a domestic pig as well as the Set animal, and a different god distinct from Set, though sharing the same attributes (claims of which Thompson seems skeptical). Herman Te Velde also cites Newberry, though he offers a different explanation for the meaning of "sha" as "destiny". All Things Ancient Egypt, also quoted above, calls the animal "the so-called sha-animal", while Classification from Antiquity to Modern Times just uses šꜣ and "Seth-animal".
I'm not certain what the question here is; that the hieroglyph transliterated sha is somehow associated with the creature seems to have a clear scholarly consensus; most of the scholars use it as the name of the creature; Herman Te Velde is the only one who suggests that it might not be its name, though he doesn't conclude whether it is or isn't; and one general source says in passing "so-called sha-animal", which accepts that this is what it's typically referred to in scholarship, without endorsing it. Although Newberry made the connection with pigs, none of the sources seems to write the name with pig hieroglyphs as depicted above. Could you be clearer about what it is that's being discussed here? P Aculeius (talk) 16:47, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
things that start with sh
I asked because I couldn't find it in Gardiner (jsesh, no match when searching by sound value) or Budge (dictionary vol II.)
Temerarius (talk) 05:24, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

December 30

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

[edit]

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)[reply]

Assuming he's talking about England, does he propose building a bridge over the Channel? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots12:13, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How about a tunnel? --Wrongfilter (talk) 12:29, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
As for (2), the tense is still alive and kicking, if I do say so myself. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:12, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
This is not what I am asking. 178.51.7.23 (talk) 05:05, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
I kid you not.  --Lambiam 23:47, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What percentage of Ancient Greek literature was preserved?

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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)[reply]

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)[reply]
One estimate is (less than) [19] one percent. --Askedonty (talk) 20:40, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We have a Lost literary work article with a large "Antiquity" section. AnonMoos (talk) 21:15, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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.[1]
  2. Although not just Greek, but only 1% of ancient literature survives.[2] --ExclusiveEditor 🔔 Ping Me! 11:12, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The following quantities are known: the number of preserved works, the (unknown) number of lost works, and the number of lost works of which we know, through mentions in preserved works. In a (very) naive model, let stand for the probability that a given work (lost or preserved) is mentioned in some other preserved work (so ). The expected number of mentions of preserved works in other preserved works is then 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 and compute
 --Lambiam 13:09, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • 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)[reply]

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)[reply]
178.51.7.23 -- Think of it this way: What did it mean to "publish" something in the ancient world? You had at least one written manuscript of your work -- rarely more than a handful of such manuscripts. You could show what you had written to your friends, have it delivered to influential people, bequeath it to your heirs, or donate it to an archive or research collection (almost none of which were meaningfully public libraries in the modern sense of that phrase). However you chose to do it, once you were gone, the perpetuation of your work depended on other people having enough interest in it to do the laborious work of copying the manuscript, or being willing to pay to have a copy made. Works of literature which did not interest other people enough to copy manuscripts of it were almost always eventually lost, which ensured that a lot of tedious and worthless stuff was filtered out. Of course, pagan literary connoisseurs, Christian monks, Syriac and Arabic translators seeking Greek knowledge, and Renaissance Humanists all had different ideas of what was worth preserving, but between them, they ensured that a lot of interesting or engaging or informative works ended up surviving from ancient times. I'm sure that a number of worthy books still slipped through the gaps, but some losses were very natural and to be expected; for example, some linguists really wish that Claudius's book on the Etruscan language had survived, but it's not surprising that it didn't, since it would not have generally interested ancient, medieval, or renaissance literate people in the same way it would interest modern scholars struggling with Etruscan inscriptions.
By the way, college bookstores on or near campuses of universities which had a Classics program sometimes used to have a small section devoted to the small green-backed (Greek) and red-backed (Latin) volumes of the Loeb Classical Library, and you could get an idea of what survived from ancient times (and isn't very obscure or fragmentary) by perusing the shelves... AnonMoos (talk) 01:03, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed - at the other end of the scale, the Description of Greece by Pausanias seems to have survived into the Middle Ages in a single MS (now of course lost), and there are no ancient references to either it or him known. Since the Renaissance it has been continuously in print. Johnbod (talk) 03:00, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

References

December 31

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

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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)[reply]

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

References

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I am on to creating an article on Lu Chun [zh] 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)[reply]

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)[reply]

Battle of the Granicus

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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". Brandmeistertalk 23:38, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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,[20] 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)[reply]

January 1

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

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

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)[reply]
Apparently yes: Dean Corll was killed by one of his his accomplices, Elmer Wayne Henley. --Antiquary (talk) 12:13, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
Aren't hired killers distinct from the usual concept of a serial killer? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots09:11, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Outside the movies? Sure, on TV. Clarityfiend (talk) 21:09, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Dexter character from the multiple Dexter series is based on Pedro Rodrigues Filho, who killed criminals, including murderers. It is necessary to decide how many merders each of those murders did in order to decide if you would want to classify them as serial killers or just general murderers. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 19:04, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It sounds like the Death Wish (1974 film) film series might have also drawn inspiration from Filho. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots03:24, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Another serial killer question

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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)[reply]

Ted Kaczynski ("the Unabomber") comes to mind. --142.112.149.206 (talk) 07:06, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
Joseph Paul Franklin. Prezbo (talk) 13:51, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Missing fire of London

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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  talkedits 13:48, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]
It would also be odd to call it a "London blaze".  --Lambiam 15:15, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The closest I found was the 1861 Tooley Street fire. Alansplodge (talk) 16:30, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also a large fire at Wood Street in the City in 1882 (perhaps later mistaken for 1892?). [21] Alansplodge (talk) 16:40, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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". [22]. --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)[reply]
@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)[reply]
@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  talkedits 17:15, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
Oh, the poor ducks.  --Lambiam 12:05, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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  talkedits 17:15, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
Which I have finally found (in WP) at Timeline of London (19th century)#1890 to 1899 (using the same cite as Antiquary). It does look persuasively big ("The Greatest Fire of Modern Times" - Star), though there were no fatalities. Despite that, an inquest was held. It sounds much more likely than the docks fire to have been memorable in 1936. -- Verbarson  talkedits 19:26, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]


January 4

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Could the Sack of Jericho be almost

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historical in the sense that the story of what happened, happened to a different city but was transferred to Jericho?Rich (talk) 05:37, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It might be. But then again, it might not be. Following whatever links there are to the subject within the article might be a good start for finding out about whatever theories there might be. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots07:19, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To believe that the events in the story are historical, whether for Jericho or another city, amounts to believing in a miracle. Barring miracles, no amount of horn-blowing and shouting can bring defensive walls down.
Jericho was destroyed in the 16th century BCE. The first version of the Book of Joshua was written in the late 7th century BCE, so there are 9 centuries between the destruction and the recording of the story. An orally transmitted account, passed on through some thirty generations, might have undergone considerable changes, turning a conquest with conventional war practices, possibly with sound effects meant to install fear in the besieged, into a miraculous event.  --Lambiam 10:50, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
[Edit Conflicts] The sack was described in the Book of Joshua, which however was likely compiled around 640–540 BCE, some six or seven centuries after the supposed Hebrew conquest of Canaan. Some scholars now discount the whole Exodus and Conquest narrative as political lobbying written by Jewish exiles in Babylonia (which the Persians later took over) hoping to be given control over the former territory of Israel as well as being restored to their native Judah.
The narrative logically explains why a people once 'Egyptian slaves' (like all subjects of the Pharoah) were later free in Canaan, but by then it was likely forgotten that Egypt once controlled almost the entirety of Canaan, from which it withdrew in the Late Bronze Age Collapse. The Hebrew peoples of the (always separate) states of Israel and Judah emerged from Canaanite culture in situ, though minor folk movements (for example, of the Tribe of Levi, who often had Egyptian names) may have had a role. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 10:52, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I heard the sack of Jericho in book of Joshua was an explanatory myth, not some kind of Exile claim to ownership, which is more logical anyway. If there were a more recent city that was sacked, it would be less than the estimate of 30 geneations of remembrance. I did forget to stress that when I asked if the story could be almost historical that I wasn't suggesting that Jericho's walls were supernaturally destroyed by trumpets. After all, the actual method of conquest in the story could be the connivance of the traitor Rahab.Rich (talk) 02:24, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, certainly the myth likely existed before it was consolidated with others into the written documents, just as stories about the mythical Danel may have been adapted into the fictional Daniel of the supposedly contemporary Book of Daniel describing his exploits in the 6th century BCE court of Nebuchadnezzar II, although scholars generally agree that this was actually written in the period 167–163 BCE. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 07:15, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Israelites partly emerged in situ (though there was also a definite nomad/pastoralist component), especially along the West Bank hill-chain (running in an approximate north-south direction) where the Four-room house took hold among the rural inhabitants there. They were not originally city-dwellers, and their culture could not have been consolidated until the power of the Canaanite cities in that area had declined, and it's not too hard to believe that they sometimes moved against what cities remained, so that part of the conquest narrative is not necessarily a pure myth. Jericho was in the valley (not along the hill-chain), so was not part of the core settled rural agricultural four-room house area, but was inhabited more by pastoralists/animal-herders who became affiliated... AnonMoos (talk) 21:19, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Accessibility, for URLs in text document

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We've been asked to increase the accessibility of all documents we produce, esp. syllabi. I use WordPerfect, where I don't seem to be able to have a URL with a descriptive text in the way Word allows. 508 is the operative term. I'm trying this out: "Princeton University has some handy tips on what is called “active reading, on this webpage: https://mcgraw.princeton.edu/active-reading-strategies." In other words, descriptive text followed by a bare URL. Is that good for screen readers? Graham87, how does this look/sound to you? Thanks for your help, Drmies (talk) 18:03, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Drmies: I wouldn't make a general rule about that as it's context-dependent ... depending on how many URL's are in a document, reading them might get annoying. In general I'd prefer to read a link with descriptive text rather than a raw URL, because the latter aren't always very human-readable ... but I don't think this is really an accessibility issue; just do what would make sense for a sighted reader here. Graham87 (talk) 00:34, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Graham87, thanks. There's only one or two in a ten-page document. According to our bosses, this is an accessibility issue--but it seems to me as if someone sounded an alarm and now everyone who doesn't actually know much about the issue is telling us to comply with a set of directives which they haven't given us. Instead, we are directed to some self-help course that involves only Word. It's fun. Drmies (talk) 15:34, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Stop using WordPerfect and start using Word. --Viennese Waltz 07:05, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know why, but it seems many legal professionals prefer WordPerfect. Stanleykswong (talk) 10:21, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Viennese Waltz, thanks so much for that helpful suggestion. Drmies (talk) 15:27, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You can create a hyperlink to a file using WordPerfect. First, you select text or a graphic you want to create a hyperlink. Then you click “Tools”, select “Hyperlink” and then type a path or document you want to link to. Stanleykswong (talk) 10:18, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Stanleykswong, that sounds like it might work: thank you. Drmies (talk) 15:34, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Do web browsers display WordPerfect documents? I don't think I have a WordPerfect viewing app installed on my platform (macOS). Does anyone have a URL of a WordPerfect document handy?  --Lambiam 14:56, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
User:Lambiam, WP translates easily to PDF and to Word. I use PDFs in my LMS. Drmies (talk) 15:34, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You can see why WordPerfect is popular in legal circles at WordPerfect#Key characteristics (fourth bullet point) and WordPerfect#Faithful customers. 2A00:23A8:1:D801:8C31:BAC2:88CF:A92B (talk) 16:48, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have the feeling this answers my question. Would I have to find and install an app that translates .wpd documents to .pdf or .doc documents? Would I then be able to tell my browser to use this app? The question is informative, not meant to bash a product that I have zero familiarity with.  --Lambiam 17:05, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've opened early WordPerfect (WP 5.1) documents using both Word and Firefox without any need for a third party translator. The only trick was changing the file extension to .WPD so that my computer could create the file association more easily. In the old days, file extensions were not so rigorously restrictive and many files ended up with extensions like .01 or .v4 or whatever. Matt Deres (talk) 17:39, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I cannot check if it would work for me, for lack of access to any WordPerfect document of any age.  --Lambiam 21:22, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Here's a bunch of them, in the DOJ archives.  Card Zero  (talk) 00:25, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, finally an answer. When I click on a .wpd link, the file is downloaded. I can then open and view it with LibreOffice. (I can also open it with OpenOffice, but then I get to see garbage like ╖#<m\r╛∞¼_4YÖ¤ⁿVíüd╤?Y.)  --Lambiam 14:44, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, web browsers do display WordPerfect documents. If you google “wpd online viewer”, you will find a lot of them. Stanleykswong (talk) 23:04, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
When I google [“wpd online viewer”], I get two hits, one to this page and one to a site where you can upload a WPD document in order to be able to view it online. What happens when you view an html page with something like <a href="file:///my-document.wpd">Looky here!</a> embedded?  --Lambiam 13:49, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, you're right. Only Docx2doc (https://www.docx2doc.com/convert) and Jumpshare provide online viewers now. However, there are still other offline alternative, such as Cisdem (https://www.cisdem.com/document-reader-mac.html) and Apache. Stanleykswong (talk) 09:46, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Some other text editors, such as TextMaker, can open and view WPD files. However, after editing, the WPD files can only be saved as other formats, such as docx or doc. Stanleykswong (talk) 09:49, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

One more thing that just came up--we got rapped on the fingers though the mandatory "training" didn't touch on it. We've been told that hyphens are bad. The internet tells me that screenreaders have trouble with hyphenated words, but does this apply also to date ranges? Graham87, does yours get this right, "Spring Break: 17-21 March"? For now I'm going with "Spring Break, 17 to 21 March", but it just doesn't look good to my traditional eyes. And on top of that I have to use sans serif fonts... Drmies (talk) 17:44, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • To give another example, I have to redo this: "Final grades are computed along the following scale: A: 90-100; B+: 87-89; B: 80-86; C+: 77-79; C: 70-76; D+: 67-69; D: 60-66; F: Below 60." Drmies (talk) 17:49, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 5

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How to search for awkwardly named topics

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On and off I've been looking for good sources for the concepts of general union and trade union federation so as to improve the articles, but every time I try I only get one or two somewhat helpful results. Many of the results are not of material about the concepts of general union or trade union federations, but often about a specific instance of them, and as a result hard to gleen a lot from about the broader concept. Typcially this is because of issues such as many general unions being named as such (for example Transport & General Workers' Union). I'm aware of the search trick that'd be something like "general union" -Transport & General Workers' Union but I've found it largely cumbersome and ineffective, often seeming to filter out any potential material all together

Thought I'd ask because I'd like to improve those articles, and this is an issue I'm sure would come up again for me otherwise on other articles Bejakyo (talk) 13:22, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Do any of the articles listed at Unionism help? Blueboar (talk) 14:35, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you search for ["a trade union federation" -"is a trade union federation"], most hits will not be about a specific instance.  --Lambiam 14:43, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 6

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What does the Thawabit consist of?

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I asked about this at the article talk page and WikiProject Palestine, no response. Maybe it's not a question Wikipedia can answer, but I'm curious and it would improve the article. Prezbo (talk) 09:13, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • It's acronym (or an abbreviation) for the four principles enumerated in the article. Like how the Bill of Rights is the first ten amendments to the US Constitution. Abductive (reasoning) 13:16, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thawabit is short for alThawabit alWataniat alFilastinia, the "Palestinian National Constants". Thawabit is the plural of thabit, "something permanent or invariable; constant".  --Lambiam 13:36, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    What I'm saying is that I'm not sure the article is correct. The sourcing is thin, reference are paywalled, offline, or dead, and Google isn't helpful. Other scholarly and activist sources give different versions of the Thawabet, e.g.This one adds the release of Palestinian prisoners, this one adds that Palestine is indivisible. The article says that these principles were formulated by the PLO in 1977 but doesn't link to a primary source (like the Bill of Rights). I don't know if you're a subject matter expert here, I'm not--actually trying to figure this out. Prezbo (talk) 13:39, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I was able to access the paywalled articles through the Wikipedia library, which adds a little more clarity. Prezbo (talk) 10:18, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
According to this source, a fifth principle was added in 2012: "the objection to recognize the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people". However, I cannot find this in the cited source  --Lambiam 13:29, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I checked the Arabic Wikipedia article before I responded above, and they list the same four principles. Abductive (reasoning) 13:41, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That appears to be a translation of the English article, so this doesn't mean much to me. Prezbo (talk) 13:44, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've poked around a little, and there doesn't appear to have been any change. Abductive (reasoning) 13:59, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The list in the book I linked to above is not the same as that in our article. The book does not include a "right to resistance", but demands the release by Israel of all Palestinian prisoners. It would be good to have a sourced, authoritative version, in particular the actual 1977 formulation by the PLO. Of course, nothing is so changeable as political principles, so one should expect non-trivial amendments made in the course of time.  --Lambiam 14:21, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That book is incorrect. Abductive (reasoning) 21:07, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
How do you know?  --Lambiam 00:04, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The text does not explicitly say, "among others", but the use of بها بما في ذلك suggests that this list of four principles is not exhaustive.  --Lambiam 00:27, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 7

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Is there such a thing as a joke type index?

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Has anyone produced an index of joke types and schemata (schemes?) along the lines of the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index for folk tales? More generally what kind of studies of the structure of jokes and humor are available? Has anyone come up with an A.I. that can generate new jokes? 178.51.8.23 (talk) 18:15, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For starters, there's Index of joke types. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots21:14, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
AI generated jokes have been around for years. Just Google for it. They range from weird to meh. Shantavira|feed me 10:38, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Gershon Legman made an attempt of sorts in his two joke collections, but it was kind of a half-assed approach: there are a bunch of indices printed on pages, but no key tying them together per se. His interest was in the core of the subject of the joke, so he might have said, for example, that these jokes were all based on unresolved Oedipal drives while those jokes were based on hatred of the mother (he was a capital "F" Freudian). The link Bugs shared is more about the formats of the jokes themselves, though some are also differentiated by their subject (albeit in a more superficial way than Legman attempted). Matt Deres (talk) 21:15, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Arthur Koestler has attempted to develop a theory of humour (as well as art and discovery), first in Insight and Outlook (1949) and slightly elaborated further in The Act of Creation (1964). He did, however, not develop a typology of jokes. IMO Victor Raskin's script-based semantic theory of humor presented in Semantic Mechanisms of Humor (1985) is essentially the same as Koestler's, but Raskin does not reference Koestler in the book. For an extensive overview of theories of humour see Contemporary Linguistic Theories of Humour.  --Lambiam 00:51, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 8

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The Nest magazine, UK, 1920s

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I have a copy of The Grocer's Window Book. London: The Nest Magazine. 1922., "arranged by The Editor of The Nest". The address of The Nest Magazine is given as 15 Arthur Street, London, EC4. It contains suggestions for arranging window displays in an attractive manner to attract customers into independent grocer's shops. I would be interested to know more about The Nest. I suspect it may have something to do with Nestles Milk, as 1) the back cover is a full-page advertisement for Nestles and Ideal Milk, and there are several other adverts for Nestles products in the book, and 2) one of the suggested window displays involves spelling out "IDEAL" with tins of Ideal Milk. Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 02:13, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nest, 1922. M.—1st. 6d. Nestle and Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Co., 15 Arthur Street, E.c.4[23] according to Willing's press guide and advertisers directory and handbook. I also found it in The Newspaper press directory and advertisers' guide, which merely confirms the address and the price of sixpence. Both of these were for the year 1922, which suggests to me that the magazine might not have survived into 1923. M signifies monthly, and 1st probably means published on the 1st of the month.  Card Zero  (talk) 19:37, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Historical U.S. population data by age (year 1968)

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In the year 1968, what percentage of the United States population was under 25 years old? I am wondering about this because I am watching the movie Wild in the Streets, and want to know if a percentage claimed in the film was pulled out of a hat or was based in fact. 2601:18A:C500:E830:CE4:140C:29E5:594F (talk) 04:17, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What percentage did they give? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots05:14, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
52% (it's on the movie poster).  Card Zero  (talk) 16:11, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Tabel No. 6 in the 1971 US Census Report (p. 8) gives, for 1960, 80093 Kpeople age 0–24 on a total population of 180007 Kpeople, corresponding to 44.5%, and, for 1970, 94095 Kpeople age 0–24 on a total population of 204265 Kpeople, corresponding to 46.1%. Interpolation results in an estimate of 45.8% for 1968.  --Lambiam 12:36, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Who are Kpeople? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots23:48, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Reverse engineering and a spot of maths: k = kilo = 1 000 = 1 thousand. Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 10:49, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So, Kpeople means 1 thousandpeople. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots18:07, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Countries with greatest land mass

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Can someone please fill in these blanks? Thank you.

1. Currently, the USA ranks as number _____ among countries with the greatest land mass.

2. If the USA were to "annex" or "acquire" both Canada and Greenland, the USA would rank as number _____ among countries with the greatest land mass.

Thanks. 32.209.69.24 (talk) 05:20, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See List of countries and dependencies by area, which gives a nuanced answer to your first question, and the answer to your second question is obvious from the data in the article.-Gadfium (talk) 05:24, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
4 and 1. But the chance of Trump to annex Canada is close to zero. Stanleykswong (talk) 09:58, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also the US somehow annexing Greenland is infinitely improbable. It's part of the European Union. Alansplodge (talk) 12:59, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Trump's presidential term is four years and the process of discussion would take longer than that. Stanleykswong (talk) 14:20, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No it isn't. —Tamfang (talk) 00:16, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 11

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JeJu AirFlight 2216

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Is this the beginning of a new conspiracy theory? On 11 January, the Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board stated that both the CVR and FDR had stopped recording four minutes before the aircraft crashed.[79]

Why would the flight recorder stop recording after the bird strike? Don't they have backup battery for flight recorders? Ohanian (talk) 09:59, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean JeJu Air Flight 2216? Stanleykswong (talk) 14:27, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, you are right, flight 2216 not 2219. I have updated the title. Ohanian (talk) 14:51, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It says on wikipedia that "With the reduced power requirements of solid-state recorders, it is now practical to incorporate a battery in the units, so that recording can continue until flight termination, even if the aircraft electrical system fails. ". So how can the CVR stop recording the pilot's voices??? Ohanian (talk) 10:11, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The aircraft type was launched in 1994, this particular aircraft entered service in 2009. It may have had an older type of recorder.
I too am puzzled by some aspects of this crash, but I'm sure the investigators will enlighten us when they're ready. PiusImpavidus (talk) 11:41, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Having looked into this briefly, it sounds like an independent power supply for the CVR (generally called a Recorder Independent Power Supply/RIPS) was only mandated for aircraft manufacturer from 2010 in the US [24] [25]. I doubt anyone else required them before. [26] So not particularly surprising if this aircraft didn't have one. I think, but am not sure, that even in the US older aircraft aren't required to be retrofitted with these newer recorders. (See e.g. [27] [28] [29].) In fact, the only regulator I could find with such a mandate is the Canadian one and that isn't until 2026 at the earliest [30]. Of course even if the FAA did require it, it's a moot point unless it was required for any aircraft flying to the US and this aircraft was flying to the US. I doubt it was required in South Korea given that it doesn't seem to be required in that many other places. There is a lot of confusing discussion about what the backup system if any on this aircraft would have been like [31] [32] [33]. The most I gathered from these discussions is that because the aircraft was such an old design where nearly everything was mechanical, a backup power supply wasn't particularly important in its design. The only expert commentary in RS I could find was in Reuters [34] "a former transport ministry accident investigator, said the discovery of the missing data from the budget airline's Boeing 737-800 jet's crucial final minutes was surprising and suggests all power, including backup, may have been cut, which is rare." Note that the RIPS only have to work for 10 minutes, I think the timeline of this suggests power should not have been lost for 10 minutes at the 4 minutes point, but it's not something I looked in to. BTW, I think this is sort of explained in some of the other sources but if not see [35]. Having a RIPS is a little more complicated than just having a box with a battery. There's no point recording nothing so you need to ensure that the RIPS is connected to/powering mics in the cabin. Nil Einne (talk) 01:28, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The aircraft made 13 flights in 48 hours, meaning less than 3.7 hours per flight. Is it too much? Its last flight from Bangkok to Korea had a normal flight time for slightly more than 5 hours. Does it mean the pilots had to rush through preflight checks? Stanleykswong (talk) 15:31, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
With this kind of schedule, it is questionable that the aircraft is well-maintained. Stanleykswong (talk) 15:32, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The OP seems to be obsessed with creating a new conspiracy theory out of very little real information, and even less expertise. Perhaps a new hobby is in order? DOR (ex-HK) (talk) 19:37, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just for info, the article is Jeju Air Flight 2216. This question has not yet been raised at the Talk page there. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:42, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fortune 500

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Is there any site where one can view complete Fortune 500 and Fortune Global 500 for free? These indices are so widely used so is there such a site? --40bus (talk) 20:05, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You can view the complete list here: https://fortune.com/ranking/global500/ Stanleykswong (talk) 21:50, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 12

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Language

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December 29

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A few questions

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  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)[reply]

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)[reply]
Indeed, English dropped it. Maybe it got less useful as English switched to SVO word order. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:42, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It disappeared early in Old Norse, as well. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:42, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
ad 1.: You mean within a syllable? Otherwise you'd have to accept words like vielleicht. --Wrongfilter (talk) 10:24, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Strauss / Strauß, which except for a name can mean 'bunch' or 'ostrich'. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:42, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
A similar situation applies to 40bus' native Finnish. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:13, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]

December 30

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

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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)[reply]

Might just be an approximation, since French and Italian lack a velar fricative natively. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:12, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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 [36] explains that this spelling was adopted to approximate the pronunciation used in Spanish at the time. Xuxl (talk) 14:44, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
Was final e silent in French at the tme of the novel? —Tamfang (talk) 00:41, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

178.51.7.23 -- The letter "X" standing for a "sh" sound was still alive enough in the 16th century, that the convention was used for writing Native American languages (see Chicxulub etc)... AnonMoos (talk) 01:05, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

VIP

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

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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
Somewhat akin to VP for Vice President, typically pronounced "VEE-PEE" but also colloquially as "VEEP". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots21:34, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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: [37] --Viennese Waltz 10:21, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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? carrots13:59, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]

December 31

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Spanish consonants

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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)[reply]

A couple of explanation options can be found in this thread: [38]. 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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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? carrots11:42, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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? carrots01:29, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]

The <surname> woman

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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)[reply]

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)[reply]
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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]

English vowels

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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)[reply]

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

January 1

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Fraction names

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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)[reply]

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)[reply]
(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)[reply]
Is then 75 minutes "one and a quarter hours"? Is 250,000 "a quarter million"? --40bus (talk) 15:20, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
To my annoyance, "24 hours" and multiples thereof are often used as synonyms of "day(s)", not for precision but because more syllables make more importance. —Tamfang (talk) 23:00, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia has an article Nychthemeron (an unambiguous expression in technical English)... AnonMoos (talk) 21:17, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The two pronunciations of Hebrew letter Het in Ancient Hebrew?

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The Hebrew letters Het (ח) and ayin (ע) had two different pronunciations each in Ancient Hebrew: the Het could be pronounced like Arabic Ha (ح) or like Arabic kha (خ) while ayin could be pronounced like Arabic ayin (ع) or like Arabic ghayin (غ).

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)[reply]

Didn't Biblical Hebrew survive as a liturgical language? Maybe that proviced pointers. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:44, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
Oops, yes, mistake.  --Lambiam 13:27, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
חַגַּי‎ (Haggai) is transcribed as ᾿Αγγαῖος (Angaios), Aggaeus in the Vulgate.  --Lambiam 14:09, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
This conversation brings up the question "Does the LXX contain transcriptions?"
Temerarius (talk) 18:07, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What do you mean? 178.51.7.23 (talk) 19:15, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"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)[reply]
See "On Polyphony in Biblical Hebrew" (PDF here) for a discussion by a distinguished scholar (Joshua Blau), arguing in great detail for the polyphony of ח (and also ע), representing both a pharyngeal consonant and a velar fricative in "literary" or formal Biblical recitation Hebrew down to the late centuries B.C. AnonMoos (talk) 01:10, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. But except for the front and back covers (first two and last two pages) the PDF file is absolutely illegible. Were you able to get legible PDFs of this article?
Was this 1982 article the first time someone realized that these two letters were "polyphonic" in Ancient Hebrew?
I was once browsing through a Hebrew dictionary (the well-known Even-Shoshan) in its ca. 1960 edition and (looking in a grammatical-historical appendix in the last volume) it didn't seem like the author of the dictionary was at all aware of the "polyphony" of those two letters in Ancient Hebrew.
But when I looked in a ca. 1995 edition of that same dictionary (in a one volume so called "merukaz" edition, incidentally) that "polyphony" was clearly alluded to.
Avraham Even-Shoshan, the author of the dictionary, died in 1984 so I don't know if it was he who changed things there (not impossible, as he had two years to do it), or if it was someone after his death (there were new editions of the dictionary as late as the 2000s).
In any case I imagined that between ca. 1960 and ca. 1995 something had changed in our knowledge of the pronunciation of Ancient Hebrew but I didn't know whose contribution it was.
178.51.94.220 (talk) 19:54, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The built-in PDF-viewers of some browers (Opera, Chrome) indeed display this document atrociously, but after having saved it locally, I could easily open it with all kinds of PDF viewers and get a legible view of it. Blau devotes four and a half pages to the history of research velar transcriptions of ayin. –Austronesier (talk) 20:26, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It worked. Thanks. 178.51.94.220 (talk) 21:13, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The PDF worked fine for me. I strongly doubt that 1982 was the first time, because scholars would have been able to compare Septuagint transcriptions to proto-Semitic reconstructions decades before that... AnonMoos (talk) 20:37, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There remains the question why the first editions of Even-Shoshan didn't seem to know about this. 178.51.94.220 (talk) 21:17, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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

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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)[reply]

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)[reply]

Use of Old Norse in old Rus'?

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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)[reply]

To start you off, Wiktionary have a Category:Russian terms derived from Old Norse. --Antiquary (talk) 13:45, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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." [39] --Antiquary (talk) 10:02, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

English tenses

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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)[reply]

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)[reply]
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)[reply]
If I study really hard, someday I will become underedumacated. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:04, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
This is the so-called historical present or narrative present. --Trovatore (talk) 22:37, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The worst of it, often seen on the internet, is using past and present tenses in describing the same event, such as in a movie plot. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots03:01, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
To my ear there's a difference in acceptability between when has Arsenal ever won?, which is unassailable except by Arsenal fans I suppose, and when has Arsenal last won?, which strikes me as borderline, the kind of thing that sounds weird and you're not sure why. I guess it must have something to do with the word "last" but I don't have a well-developed theory of exactly what it has to do with it. --Trovatore (talk) 22:24, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Centuries

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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)[reply]

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)[reply]
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)[reply]
It could be, sure. And it is, sometimes. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots09:04, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
“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)[reply]
xkcd:1849. Nardog (talk) 10:30, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
I feel like "noughties" or "aughties" never really caught on. But it's almost time for the '00s nostalgia craze, so I suppose they'll come up with something. --Trovatore (talk) 00:42, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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? carrots12:28, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Back when it was 2008 (say), I would've said "two thousand and eight", but now that that year is in the past I'd say "twenty oh eight". Double sharp (talk) 03:34, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I still say "two thousand and [number from one to nine]", but it might be just me, or a wider 'elderly Brit' thing. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 03:19, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yep. One thing I recall is that Charles Osgood was kind of an "early adapter" to that style, saying "twenty-oh-one" and so on. Now, pretty much everyone follows that norm. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots06:00, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Are 20th century years ever said like "nineteen hundred and twenty-five" for 1925? Does English put "hundred and" between first two and last two number in speech? --40bus (talk) 10:05, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I seem to recall that Alex Trebek used to say years that way. Maybe it was a Canadian thing. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots11:13, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Only in the most formal contexts; but see the 1973 song, Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five which I suspect used that style to aid with scansion. Alansplodge (talk) 18:48, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
An example of this very formal date usage is in this US Presidential Proclamation:
"In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twelfth day of February, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-two..."
Alansplodge (talk) 18:58, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I often say, we need a wildcard digit other than '0'. I often write "197x" and "200x" but would not do so in an article. —Tamfang (talk) 22:49, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So does "the 19xx's" mean all the years from 1900 to 1999, or only the ones that are congruent to 8 mod 11? --Trovatore (talk) 21:01, 4 January 2025 (UTC) [reply]
Perhaps "the 19xy's" solves that problem. :) Double sharp (talk) 05:11, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
During the 20th century, I only ever heard the period referred to as "the 20th century". If someone had talked about "the 1900s" I would have assumed they meant the decade 1900-1909. Using "the xx00s" to refer to the whole century is something I've only encountered recently, although I don't know if it actually is a recent usage or just something that has recently been revealed via internet usage. Iapetus (talk) 11:10, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 3

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Why is it boxes and not boxen?

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Why is it foxes and not foxen? Someone who's wrong on the internet (talk) 05:45, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why is it sheep and not sheeps? HiLo48 (talk) 05:57, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Don't forget the related term "sheeps kin". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots06:13, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I thought the plural of sheep was sheeple! Someone who's wrong on the internet (talk) 06:52, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Possibly because "box" has its roots in Latin.[40]Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots06:06, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also, foxen is a word, just uncommon. GalacticShoe (talk) 06:07, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Because Vikings. Maungapohatu (talk) 07:35, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As others have implied, "box" has always had an s-plural in English, and Vikings generally used the word "refr" for foxes. What's most surprising to me is actually that the old declensions "oxen" and "children" have survived. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:33, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Children is a pleonasm because childre (or childer) was already plural. See wikt:calveren and wikt:-ren.  Card Zero  (talk) 12:00, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Someone wrong -- You can look at Old English grammar#Noun classes to see the declensions of a thousand years ago or more. The regular pattern of modern English inflection comes from the Old English masculine "a-stems". The only nouns with a non-"s" plural ending in modern English (leaving aside Classical borrowings such as "referenda" and unassimilated foreignisms) are oxen, children, brethren, and the rather archaic kine, which have an ending from the OE "weak" declension (though "child" and "brother" were not originally weak declension nouns). There are also the few remaining umlaut nouns, which do not have any plural endings, and a few other forms which don't (or don't always) distinguish between singular and plural. In that context, there's no particular reason why "box" should be expected to be irregular. However, the form "boxen" has been occasionally used in certain types of computer slang: http://catb.org/jargon/html/B/boxen.html -- AnonMoos (talk) 12:18, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Likewise, VAXen, Unixen and Linuxen are geeky plurals of VAX, Unix and Linux.  --Lambiam 15:25, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Nerd Wikipedians trying to be droll sometimes say "userboxen". Cullen328 (talk) 05:18, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 4

[edit]

Pronunciation of "God b'wi you"?

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How do you pronounce "God b'wi you"? For example in Shakespeare's Henry V, Act 4, Scene 3, Line 6 (Oxford Shakespeare). The pronunciation I hear in one recording is "God by you". Folger's Shakespeare has "God be wi’ you" in writing (you can find that text online at www.folger.edu). Does that indicate a different suggested pronunciation? How would you pronounce "wi'"? Are there other variants? (Either in the text of this play or anywhere else.) There's a "God be with you" entry in Wiktionary but none of these variants are recorded. 178.51.8.23 (talk) 08:32, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

David Crystal's Oxford Dictionary of Original Shakespearean Pronunciation has [ˈbɪjə] for be with ye/you. Nardog (talk) 08:47, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. This is the original pronunciation. How is it currently commonly pronounced on the stage? I mentioned one pronunciation I heard where "b'wi" is pronounced "by". Are there other options?
Regarding the original pronunciation note videos by Ben Crystal (David Crystal's son) and those of A. Z. Foreman on his YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@a.z.foreman74.
178.51.8.23 (talk) 12:05, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd pronounce it "God be with you" but with the "th" sound missed off the end of "with." That might not be how they did it in the sixteenth century, but I'm pretty sure no sixteenth century people are coming to see the show. Incidentally, that's what they did in the Olivier movie (the line didn't appear in the Branagh version). Chuntuk (talk) 11:20, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Correlation of early human migrations with languages

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Assuming that earliest speakers of every language family had spoke some other language during the out of Africa expansion, were early human migrations successfully correlated with the consequential emergence of respective language families on migration routes? I've read about Linguistic homeland#Homelands of major language families, but wonder about the overall sequence of emergence. Brandmeistertalk 12:57, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If I understand the question the answer is no. The migrations that you are talking about took place 100,000 to 25,000 years ago and well established language families only go back 10,000-15,000 years, often less. Even at that time depth the correlation between archeology and linguistics is often controversial. See Proto-Indo-European homeland for example. Studies such as A global analysis of matches and mismatches between human genetic and linguistic histories show that while there is correlation between human genetic and linguistic history, there are enough exception to make any precise conclusions impossible without other evidence. Eluchil404 (talk) 02:39, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There have been scholarly (and less scholarly) attempts to identify language families and relationships predating those more firmly established: see for example Nostratic and various other such proposals linked from it, but these are inevitably limited, largely because the evolution of languages is sufficiently rapid that all traces of features dating very far back have been erased by subsequent developments. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 07:01, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Although I cannot evaluate the likelihood, I find it conceivable that a future all-out statistical analysis of all available source material will result in a reconstruction of Proto-Afroasiatic that is widely accepted by scholars and much richer than what we have now. Perhaps this might even establish a connection between Proto-Afroasiatic and Proto-Indo-European beyond the few known striking grammatical similarities. Then we may be speaking about close to 20 kya. But indeed, there can be no hope of reconstructions going substantially farther back, by the dearth of truly ancient sources and the relative scarcity of sources before the Modern Era.  --Lambiam 21:09, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Reconstructions of Proto-Afroasiatic have been hindered by the fact that the only branches with significant ancient attestations are Semitic and Egyptian, and for most of its history, Egyptian writing almost completely ignored vowels... AnonMoos (talk) 20:46, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Attaining cadre

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I hit "random article" for the first time in a while, and was directed to Adetoun Ogunsheye, the first female professor in Nigeria (still alive at 98). In the infobox it says she's known for "[b]eing the first Nigerian woman to attain professorial cadre", with the last two words piped to professor.

Does anyone recognize this locution of "attaining professorial cadre", or for that matter using cadre as a mass noun in any context? Is it maybe a Nigerian regionalism? Should we be using it in Wikipedia? --Trovatore (talk) 20:46, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That remark was added 7 years ago,[41] and the user who posted it is still active. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots22:56, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think the collective sense is the older, just as for police and troop.
Here are uses of, specifically, teacher's cadre:
  • "The smaller the city the more the teacher's cadre demand administrative support"[42]
  • "the cadre in which the teachers belong"[43]
Other uses of the collective sense:
  • "The officers, non-commissioned officers, and corporals, constitute what is called the 'cadre.' "[44]
  • "any one individual's decision to join a cadre",[45]
  • "the cadre is appropriately composed in terms of skills and perspectives"[46]
 --Lambiam 23:43, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
None of those uses look like mass nouns to me; they all appear to be count nouns. --Trovatore (talk) 01:02, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Anyway, the phrasing is weird and probably just wrong (even in Nigerian English), so I've simplified it. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:07, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I think that's best. I'm still curious about the phrase, though. @HandsomeBoy: any comment? --Trovatore (talk) 04:05, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Promotion (in)to professorial cadre"[47][48][49] is short for "promotion (in)to the professorial cadre".[50][51][52]  --Lambiam 14:13, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Lambiam, I can almost twist my brain into following that. So far it does appear to be a Nigerianism. My reaction till proved otherwise is that we probably shouldn't use it in English Wikipedia, given that (unlike Americanisms and Briticisms) it's not going to be recognizable in most of the Anglosphere. But it's reminiscent of the lakh / crore thing, on which I don't have a completely firm opinion and which still seems a bit unsettled en.wiki-wide. --Trovatore (talk) 21:39, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The term 'cadre' was/is (in my experience) extensively used in translations from Mandarin where in Communist China a distinct body or group, especially of military, governmental, or political personnel, is referred to: I have also seen it used in a similar fashion regarding communist regimes and parties elsewhere, so it has something of a Marxist flavour (I wonder if Karl Marx used it in his writings?), but also in non-communist contexts. I don't think it can be characterised as a 'Nigerianism'.
The Wiktionary entry is of course relevant. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 08:08, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
94, I think maybe you came in late to the discussion. Of course the word "cadre" is not a Nigerianism. The locution in question is attain professorial cadre, which on its face appears to use the word as a mass noun meaning something like "status". Lambiam's search results suggest a different, slightly convoluted explanation, but all seem to come from Nigeria, which suggests to me that this usage of the word is a Nigerianism. --Trovatore (talk) 20:55, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Trovatore: It's nice to see the article suggested to you, and I hope you enjoyed reading the article :). These little things motivate me to keep creating impactful articles. Regarding the usage of "cadre", I try to be creative and phrase content in a manner that is dissimilar with source references. I believe I didn't want to use the language from the source and "cadre" came to mind. It seemed like having the same meaning as my interpretation from the sources. From the discussion above, it looks like I was not entirely correct. I believe the article was created during a contest, so speed was also important to me. HandsomeBoy (talk) 22:36, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    FWIW, I just did a Google search and I am seeing a lot across virtually all universities in Nigeria. So it might actually be a thing UniAbuja, RUN, KWASU, Unibadan, etc. HandsomeBoy (talk) 23:07, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 5

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Name of Nova Scotia?

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Is there any historical explanation of why the name of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia uses Latin. Is it an oddity with no explanation? Do you know of any other European colony (especially of the form "new something") that uses a Latin name instead of an equivalent in a modern European language? 178.51.8.23 (talk) 13:57, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The semi-Latin name Nova Zembla was until fairly recently[53] the most commonly used English exonym of Новая Земля. (It is still the preferred exonym in Dutch and Portuguese.)  --Lambiam 14:30, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Is "Nova Zembla" semi-Latin or just a garbled version of the Russian? 178.51.8.23 (talk) 14:42, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In this borrowing, Zembla is clearly a phonetic adaptation, but (although this would be hard to prove), I find the most plausible explanation for the component Nova that it arose by alignment with the then many Latin geonyms found on maps and atlases starting with Nova. In any case, the evidence is that Nova Zembla used to be seen as a Latin name, as from the use of the accusative case Novam Zemblam here, in 1570, and the genitive case Novæ Zemblæ here, in 1660.  --Lambiam 20:26, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It was named in 1621, when James I made William Alexander, 1st Earl of Stirling lord of the area. This lordship was granted in the royal charter, written in Latin. Praefato Domino Willelmo Alexander ... nomine Novae Scotiae. Though he left his own name as William and didn't change it to Willelmo, he apparently took the instruction to call the place Nova Scotia very literally.  Card Zero  (talk) 14:38, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Was Nova Scotia the only Scottish colony ever? Maybe it is a Scottish thing to use Latin? 178.51.8.23 (talk) 14:45, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There was also the Darien scheme, i.e. New Caledonia.--2A04:4A43:909F:F990:E596:9C8F:DF47:1709 (talk) 15:22, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And re-used for New Caledonia by James Cook in 1774. -- Verbarson  talkedits 18:25, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And Sir Francis Drake claimed New Albion (or Nova Albion) in the California area in 1579. -- Verbarson  talkedits 18:30, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Back then (the 17th century) it was a European thing to use Latin in a lot of contexts, particularly in law and academia. Consider for example Isaac Newton's magnum opus, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 18:10, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There are the Carolinas (Latin for Charles). Matt Deres (talk) 17:31, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And Australia, from Terra Australis (Southland), for a while also known as New Holland. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:41, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thule (Greek/Latin, location uncertain) and Ultima Thule Peak (in a former Russian colony or territory; I don't know whether the Russians named it, but the Alaskans did in 1996). -- Verbarson  talkedits 17:38, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Guys, I am grateful for all your answers. I just want to point out that my question was not about names in Latin (there are other exmples btw: Virginia, Georgia, Columbia/Colombia, Argentina, maybe Guinea, etc.) but specifically names in Latin where an equivalent in a modern European language seems to be more natural. I was simply curious as to why "Nova Scotia" instead of "New Scotland". All your examples are great but for very few of them (if any) an equivalent into a modern European language comes readily to mind. For example "New Caledonia" would have no "equivalent into a modern European language". Caledonia is itself a Latinism. So is "Batavia" say. There are many places in Europe with classical equivalents. Using one of those is not exactly the same thing as using a Latin translation of a modern name. Clearly it is not always clear cut. "Hispania" and "Austria" would be considered Latin translations of "Spain" and "Austria", but "Lusitania" and "Helvetia" would not be considered Latin translations of "Portugal" and "Switzerland". Does it depend on whether the Latin and the modern language equivalent are related etymologically? Of if that relation is commonly perceived? If the city of New York had been named instead "Novum Eboracum" would we be in one case or the other? I'll let you decide. The two names are linked but it is pretty involved. 178.51.8.23 (talk) 18:11, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
'Caledonia' is no more of a Latinism than 'Scotia', and is sometimes used as a near synonym for 'Scotland' in modern British English (including Scots English, not to be confused with Scots, or Scottish Gaelic in which it's called Alba). It would be rather confusing if we called two different places "New Scotland" – I suppose Cook could have named his discovery "New Pictland", but I'm not sure if that would have gone down well.
You refer to 'modern European language[s]', but these (particularly English) have long since absorbed a great deal of Latin, both in assimilated and 'classical' form, so to me your attempted distinctions appears meaningless. Others may differ. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 10:18, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Austria" is a Latin coinage to begin with. Otherwise, there are a few languages which have calqued the native "Österreich" (Eastern Kingdom). Navajo has apparently the descriptive moniker "Homeland of the leather pants". 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:47, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And now I'm curious about place-names in sign languages. I dimly remember (or misremember) that the Trappist sign for Jerusalem means ‘Jew city’. —Tamfang (talk) 22:36, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I know, they're generally spelled out letter by letter, unless they are famous enough to get their own sign. Some might be "compound-signed" from their constituent parts if they're transparent enough, I guess. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 23:42, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 6

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Lowercase L that looks like capital I with an extra serif

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I just came across on Harper's Bazaar's website a lowercase L that looks the like capital I with an extra serif sticking to the left in the middle (kind of like I superimposed with text-figure 1). See e.g. "looks", "Viola", "Winslet", etc. here.

Is this style of lowercase L something found in existing typefaces? The font is SangBleu OG Serif by Swiss Typefaces and it appears to be the only typeface of theirs that has this type of L. Nardog (talk) 05:22, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Beats me why they're calling those all one typeface instead of five. Anyway, in the "OG serif" incarnation, they got the weird arm on the lowercase L from Romain du Roi. The long s also has one. This incunable (from incunable) also has the nub (arm? Bar? Flag?) on lowercase L in many instances, but for some reason not all of them.
Edit: I think the nub is missing only in ligatures, mainly el. And I think this is originally a blackletter thing. This handwritten bible shows a similar but less distinct effect, due I think to the minim (palaeography). The scribe first draws a minim, then extends it to write the lowercase L. Caslon's specimen has it, but only in the blackletter face (top right). I think the explanation is thus the same as the origin of the nub on long S.  Card Zero  (talk) 12:08, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The ⟨eſ ⟩ pairs in the Valerius Maximus incunable also have nubless ⟨ſ ⟩es.  --Lambiam 00:01, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, so there is precedent. Nardog (talk) 09:17, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There's a Swedish publisher, Modernista, that uses an st ligature in their logotype. I believe they also use it constantly and consistently within the books themselves, as a brand identity, which of course could come across as pretty strained. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:26, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In that Caslon specimen the ⟨b⟩ and ⟨h⟩ also have nubs. The letter ⟨k⟩ does not occur in the specimen's text, but here we also find the Caslon black ⟨k⟩ nubbed.  --Lambiam 14:11, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Unsatisfied, I dug up this brief discussion of Romain du Roi's lowercase L. The lowercase letter /l shows the most distinctive feature of the letters. It has a small serif on the left side at x-height, called ergot or sécante in French. The serif is a remnant of the calligraphic style which had not appeared in any previous typefaces. This serif makes the Romain du Roi unique. The reason why the Romain du Roi /l possessed the serif is not clearly documented. One theory says that this serif was used to distinguish it more clearly from the capital letter /l, which has the same height. The other theory claims that Louis XIV wanted to have an unmistakable feature in the /l, because his name began with this letter. Yeah. Thing is, Romain du Roi put the bars on the top and bottom of the glyph gratuitously, so if it then needed disambiguating from capital i, that doesn't seem like a very rational thing to have done.  Card Zero  (talk) 17:28, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You might not be satisfied looking for rationality. I think the aim was modernity and it might have been intended to be transitional. The /b and the /d have their strong upper serifs so the /l could not be without its own ( there still can be felt some of that era heavy cavalry dynamics - digging in up - in the double /l as in "brilliant"). --Askedonty (talk) 23:32, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sweet, I've updated Romain du Roi and L. Nardog (talk) 09:38, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The source (written in a sans serif font) falls into the same trap that it's describing. Taken literally, it says that the Romain du Roi needed to distinguish l from L, but we know what it means. Thank you for actually improving Wikipedia, I'll consider doing that sometimes too. :)  Card Zero  (talk) 14:39, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 7

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Examples of the use of "might" as a past tense?

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The past form of "may", "might", is mostly used as a conditional: "He might have said that, then again might not have". Uses of "might" as a past tense meaning "was/were allowed to" seem to be much rarer: "He might not say that" is most often intended to mean (and understood to mean) "it is possible that he will not say that", not as "he was not allowed to say that".

But that usage is not completely unknown: for example Edna St Vincent Millay writes in her sonnet "Bluebeard": "This door you might not open and you did / So enter now, and see for what slight thing / You are betrayed".

Do you have other examples of "might" being used as a past tense of "may"? I mean examples from the literature, jounalism, etc. not examples made up by Wiktionary editors, or other dictionaries, not because I don't trust Wiktionary editors or dictionary editors, but because I'd trust more examples that were not produced specifically for the purpose of illustrating a dictionary definition.

I'm especially interested in examples where "might" is used as a past tense in affirmative constructions! The examples above are all with "might not". I have the feeling the use of "might" in a negative sentence would sound more natural than in an affirmative sentence (if there's any example of it at all). Do you agree?

178.51.8.23 (talk) 17:04, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

He appointed twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach. Mark 3:14 -- Verbarson  talkedits 17:13, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Great. Thanks. Please keep all kinds of examples coming, but watch out especially for examples where "might" is used in a main (or independent) clause (rather than a subordinate clause such as "(in order) that they might..."). 178.51.8.23 (talk) 17:32, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In Francis Cottington, 1st Baron Cottington we find ...after the dismissal of the Short Parliament, he declared it his opinion that at such a crisis the king might levy money without the Parliament. --Trovatore (talk) 18:23, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Here's another one, not directly subordinate in a that clause, though still notionally subordinate to a verb of speaking within a multi-sentence passage of reported speech, in a 19th-century summary of a parliamentary debate [54] "Mr BUCKNILL (Surry, Epsom) said, […] Member after Member had spoken of a particular company […] and, if he might use the expression, it had really in this Debate been ridden to death […]". Fut.Perf. 19:12, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I just went to Google News and searched on the phrase "he might have done". Here was one of the hits, in the New York Times: "A former Marine who trained Daniel Penny to apply a chokehold said Thursday that images and video suggest that he might have done so improperly when he killed a homeless man last year." And this headline from Vanity Fair: "Trump's Missing Phone Logs Mean We Don't Even Know Half the Illegal Shit He Might Have Done on 1/6". And this from the Seattle Times: "Although there is an area he might have done better." And from the BBC: "But Peter persisted, and now he can reflect on the earlier disappointments and what he might have done differently". My native-speaker instinct insists that "might" is the only correct form in these cases and "may" is an error, although I know others use it. --142.112.149.206 (talk) 19:56, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To me "may have done" is usable if it is currently possible (that is, the speaker does not currently know it to be false) that it happened, whereas "might have done" is usable in that case and also in the counterfactual case (if this had happened, then that might have happened). Prescription alert: Saying "if this had happened, then that may have happened" is in my opinion an error.
But that isn't what the OP is asking about. The OP is asking about using "might" as a past tense of "may", in the sense that "A might do B" means "A was morally allowed, or otherwise had the permission or authority, to do B". This sense does exist but has become somewhat rare. --Trovatore (talk) 20:02, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Does this count: "I [...] did what I might."[55]?  --Lambiam 00:12, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also: "Then Titul took a knife from his belt and asked the Gaul if he could kill himself; and the Gaul tried, but he might not."[56]  --Lambiam 00:29, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely. Both are past tenses. The first example is a relative clause. The second example is an independent clause. And both are affirmative constructions. Thanks. 178.51.8.23 (talk) 01:01, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Although the polarity is positive, the first of these uses sounds quite natural to me. The second use feels somewhat archaic, which, I think, was the intention of the author.  --Lambiam 10:34, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Both of these examples seem to lose the distinction between "may" and "can", though. --Trovatore (talk) 19:36, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Like so many lexical terms, auxiliary may has several senses. These include "to be able to" (labelled obsolete on Wiktionary) and "to be allowed to". In both uses here we see the first sense. Note that can also has both senses ("Can you help me?" and "Can I smoke here?").  --Lambiam 00:19, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 8

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Pronunciation of "breen"

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How do you pronounce the -breen that appears at the end of Svalbard glacier names? I went through all the Svalbard -breen glacier articles on Wikipedia at Category:Glaciers_of_Spitsbergen, and not a single one provides IPA. 2601:644:4301:D1B0:B94F:4C6C:A635:20B6 (talk) 02:32, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The -en ending is the Norwegian definite mascular singular suffix, and bre means "glacier", so, for example, Nansenbreen means "the Nansen glacier".
The pronunciations in Nynorsk and Bokmål would be slightly different, with also regional variations. I have no idea which variety of spoken Norwegian is prevalent among the roughly 2,500 Norvegicophone inhabitants of Svalbard.
Extrapolating from the pronunciations of other words, I believe the pronunciation of -breen to be:
  • Nynorsk: /²brɛːn̩/
  • Bokmål:  /bʁe̞ːn̩/
For the meaning of the toneme [²], see on Wiktionary Appendix:Norwegian Nynorsk pronunciation § Stress and tonemes.  --Lambiam 10:23, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(Simultaneous editing) Here an example of Norwegian pronounciation, "Jostedaalsbreen" first mentioned around 0:06. Since Norwegian is a language of dialects I cannot rule out that there could be regional differences in pronounciation. -- 79.91.113.116 (talk) 10:24, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This agrees with my extrapolation of the Nynorsk pronunciation.  --Lambiam 10:38, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
However, I believe the two ee in the middle are being distinguished in the pronounciation rather than just pronounced as a long vowel. -- 79.91.113.116 (talk) 11:40, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The long vowel represents solely the first ⟨e⟩. The definitive suffix -en is represented by [n̩]. The vertical understroke diacritic signifies that this is a syllabic consonant.  --Lambiam 15:46, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, that would make sense. Not an IPA expert here. -- 79.91.113.116 (talk) 16:05, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the dialect, I found this: https://munin.uit.no/handle/10037/14074. Excerpt from Google Translation: This is interesting because Svalbard has no local dialect. The language community on the archipelago is instead characterized by dialectal variation. The Norwegian population in Svalbard comes from all over Norway, and the average length of residence is short. . On Norwegian Wikipedia it stated that Nynorsk spellings have to be used for all town names in Svalbard but this probably has no bearing on the pronounciation practices. -- 79.91.113.116 (talk) 17:58, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you all for your input! So it's a monosyllabic /²brɛːn̩/. 2601:644:4301:D1B0:B94F:4C6C:A635:20B6 (talk) 21:05, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Is it really monosyllabic if a syllabic vowel is followed by a syllabic consonant? By the way, I believe the common Swedish curse word fan often is pronounced somewhat similarly. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:45, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
By definition, a syllabic consonant forms a syllable on its own. So we have two syllables, the first of which ends on a vowel.  --Lambiam 00:01, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 9

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Is there a term which categorises these phrases?

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Is there a lexicographic word or term to describe phrases such as "out and about", "bits and pieces", or "nooks and crannies"? There are many such phrases which conjoin words which are less often used separately. I am not thinking of "conjunction", but something which describes this particular quirk. For example, where I grew up, no-one would say "I was out in town yesterday" but "I was out and about the town". 51.148.145.228 (talk) 15:29, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think a phraseme, also called a set phrase, fixed expression, is the term you're looking for for the phrase. Fossil word (for words not used outside set phrases) and Irreversible binomial (for phrases which have fixed order - you wouldn't say "about and out") may also be of interest. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 16:23, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
All three examples above are irreversible binomials.  --Lambiam 10:59, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you are thinking of expressions where a single meaning is carried by a conjunction of two near-synonyms, Hendiadys may be a fit. There is a narrow definition of that term where it covers only conjunctions of two terms that logically stand in a relation of subordination to each other, but there's also a wider usage where it's used for expressions like these, where the two terms are merely synonyms. Fut.Perf. 16:59, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Such as "lively and quick". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots18:04, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And also Pleonasm.  Card Zero  (talk) 18:42, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 11

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Evening and night

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Does English refer a period from 22:00 to midnight as late evening? Does English ever say "late-evening shows"? And is a period around 17:00 known as early evening, and a period around midnight as early night? And do English speskers ever say "late in the morning"? --40bus (talk) 22:36, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We say "late evening". The exact time is probably after dinner time. It could be hyphenated if you like, but isn't. We say "early evening" and "late morning". The phrase "late in the morning" is fine, and not at all awkward, but is not engraved into our English-speaking minds as an idiom like "early in the morning". Our article on Shift work defines the evening as 14:00 to 22:00, so later than that may be night, but in common usage the definition is flexible, and "night" and "evening" undoubtedly overlap. Night shift workers live in a state of confusion about whether it is currently night or morning, and which day it is.  Card Zero  (talk) 00:59, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 12

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Entertainment

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December 30

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

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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)[reply]

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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
As I wrote, different sources have different definitions. The Encyclopædia Brittanica identifies "single reed" with "beating reed".[57] Other authors distinguish between "single beating reed" and "double beating reed".[58][59] 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."[60] 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)[reply]
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)[reply]
Not empty, but IMO "earlier organs" cannot be considered common current instruments.  --Lambiam 15:19, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

December 31

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Anyone's tried "triple" reeds?

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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)[reply]

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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]

January 1

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Joe Bonamassa's "Mind's Eye" starts a lot like some other song?

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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)[reply]

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)[reply]
"My sweet Lord (do-lang, do-lang, do-lang) / Ah, may Lord (do-lang, do-lang)" etc. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots12:45, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Converting a speech contour into notes?

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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 (written or MIDI) 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)[reply]

isn't that precisely what an autotuner does? --jpgordon𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇 05:10, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think so. First there's this possibly minor difference that an autotuner doesn't produce a score (I didn't make it clear I'm looking for a piece of software that produces a score, written notes). Then again you might consider this to be a minor difference: score, MIDI file, sound file, who cares. More important is that I have the feeling though I can't be sure (since I have not examined either the algorithm of an autotuner or of that hypothetical piece of software) that there must be a difference between adjusting/correcting the off pitches of someone who's trying to sing a song and not succeeding in singing the intended pitches quite in tune, and quantizing the much wilder trace of something that was not intended to be singing in the first place. If you compare the trace of a song and that of usual speech or laughter, they look very different. There are intermediate things half-way between speech and song (rapping, whooping, Sprechgesang, etc.) Maybe laughter is also such a half-way thing. 178.51.7.23 (talk) 09:28, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 2

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doctors

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trolling
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

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)).[reply]

In general, no. Intelligence has nothing to do with this. Most spontaneous abortions happen very early in pregnancy, often before a woman even knows she was pregnant,[61] in fact, many have no symptoms at all.[62][63] If a female has clearly not yet reached puberty, or is clearly post-menopausal, one can be certain – barring miracles – that she has not recently been pregnant. No medical examination is required for this conclusion.  --Lambiam 19:49, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Do we really have to answer questions where the word "woman" is paired with the attribute "dumb" throughout? --Wrongfilter (talk) 20:25, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it was posted on the Entertainment page. Maybe the OP is using sarcasm in a desperate attempt at some kind of cheap humour. But then, I don't know which is being stretched beyond its elastic limit: their sense of what constitutes humour; or my adherence to assumption of good faith. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 20:46, 2 January 2025 (UTC) [reply]
At least the user isn't "angry" and "can't sleep" because of plot lines in some Indian soap opera. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 21:01, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
How do we know dumb woman is not the name of a character in such a show? —Tamfang (talk) 00:11, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
angry 😡 oh my gosh specifically in hindi tv mangal lakshmi,
for example, dumb woman sowmya is faking pregnancy etc.
sowmya lies about miscarriage.
if doctor’s machine checks sowmya’s stomach, can doctor’s machine still prove 100% that sowmya was never pregnant etc?(49.206.38.246 (talk) 01:08, 3 January 2025 (UTC)).[reply]

pregnancy

[edit]

angry 😡 oh my gosh specifically in hindi tv mangal lakshmi,

for example, dumb woman sowmya is faking pregnancy etc.

sowmya lies about miscarriage.

if doctor’s machine checks sowmya’s stomach, can doctor’s machine still prove 100% that sowmya was never pregnant etc?

say yes or no?(117.202.160.34 (talk) 04:59, 3 January 2025 (UTC)).[reply]

January 3

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Portable keyboards?

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One of the standard instruments in a rock band is the keyboard, even if only some bands use it. Kind of like an electric piano but less bulky than an actual piano. Still, it is bulky enough that it has to be on a fixed location of the stage and the keyboardist has to be right behind it all the time.

A pair of days ago I saw the video "Fairy of white" by the band The Big Deal (only one album in an indie label, not notable for wikipedia, but that's not the question here). The band has two singers, one of them, Nevena Branković, is also the keyboardist... and she has a strange keyboard in that video. Clearly a keyboard, but small and portable enough that she can hold it in her hands, and that seems to grant her the freedom of movement in the scenario that we would usually expect only from the singers, guitar and bass players. Is this a new type of keyboards? Cambalachero (talk) 19:42, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

They're called Keytar and were fairly popular in the eighties. If you ask me (but you don't) they've always looked ridiculous. --Wrongfilter (talk) 19:53, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
One was "popular" with Edgar Winter as far back as 1973: [64] -- probably before the term "keytar" was coined. --136.56.165.118 (talk) 20:15, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
According to our article, the term is basically as old as the instrument. Circa 1963. I know it was used in the mid 1980s. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 22:08, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But look at the orphica! I had no idea there was an acoustic keytar. Due for a revival.  Card Zero  (talk) 21:52, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Acoustic keytar" has broken my brain. But that is exacty what that is. ---User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 22:10, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, Beethoven wrote for it, so it was really happenin' in 1798, man! {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 03:15, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Portative organ was also a thing, re-popularised from the 12th century onwards, but used by the Ancient Romans – one was found in Pompeii (Reverb ad: 'some restoration required'). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 06:52, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A scene from a 1990s American sitcom?

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There's a scene in an episode of a 1990s American Black sitcom, maybe The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (then again maybe not) where a pianist enters a classroom together with the teacher (the actor playing the pianist was in all likelihood a real professional jazz pianist making a guest appearance in that episode) and asks a student to say something (the student does it in a kind of rap-like rhythmic sing song) and the pianist immediately proceeds to play the pitch contour of what the student had just said (there's a piano in the classroom) and all the students are amazed. Does anyone recall such a scene and where it is from? 178.51.94.220 (talk) 20:32, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I believe you're referring to "A Touch of Wonder", the 18th episode of the 2nd season of The Cosby Show. Stevie Wonder guests and samples the voices of the Huxtables (or possibly just Theo; it's been decades since I saw the show). No classroom as I recall; just the living room and (I think) a studio. Matt Deres (talk) 17:38, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 4

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La Marseillaise in "All You Need is Love"

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Does anyone know the exact recording of "La Marseillaise" sampled in the opening to the Beatles' "All You Need is Love"? Lizardcreator (talk) 05:10, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Our article on he song says the Beatles were "accompanied by a thirteen-piece orchestra. I assume that orchestra played the piece. HiLo48 (talk) 05:20, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah. Before 'sampling' was a thing, real musicians used actually to perform, or pay colleagues to perform, all the music they wanted on their recordings. [/grump] {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 06:48, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Though it's unlikely the Beatles hired a man with a tape recorder up his nose. Actually, according to Lewisohn's book on Beatles recording sessions, p.120, they brought in 13 musicians to play that segment. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots07:36, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 5

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music supervisor vs music consultant

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Is it wrong to use these two terms interchangeable? Trade (talk) 04:17, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We have an article Music supervisor, but not one for Music consultant, which however does return results from websearching, for example, [65], so perhaps we should.
From these, broadly, a Music Supervisor advises on and/or controls the use of music (and perhaps more) in an Audiovisual project (such as a TV show, film, etc.), including the licencing and other legal aspects, while a Music Consultant advises musicians about how to proceed in and develop their careers. Others may have more informed insights.
So, not interchangeable terms, but there's no reason why the same person could not perform both roles. Hope this helps. {The poster formerly known as 897.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 06:49, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Somewhat generally, I'd say that the term "music supervisor" identifies a role within a project team, whereas "music consultant" identifies a profession. A music supervisor is more likely to be on the payroll of a film studio or game developer, while a music consultant is generally a self-employed professional who bills their clients, typically aspiring musicians, for services rendered.  --Lambiam 15:11, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Are there zarzuelas in Portuguese?

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I've noted zarzuelas exist in at least one other language than Spanish (namely Catalan). In what other languages have zarzuelas been written in: Portuguese (Portugal or Brasil)? Galician? Valencian? Basque? Article Zarzuela only mentions Catalan (besides Spanish). 178.51.8.23 (talk) 13:50, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose you mean the opera genre, not the fish stew. I am less sure what you mean by zarzuelas existing "in a language". Do you mean zarzuelas whose libretto is written in that language?
The first sarsuala with Catalan text premiered in 1858. Catalan sarsuales had their heyday at the turn of the century, but then fizzled out, with Spanish becoming more popular.
However, the Philippine sarsuwela is alive and well, using a Tagalog text.  --Lambiam 15:40, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I had in mind the libretto for the fish stew. 178.51.8.23 (talk) 18:11, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Here is one in Turkish.  --Lambiam 21:30, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Closure of Russian Playboy

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Playboy#Former says Russian edition was closed in 2022, but for some reason I can't find any reliable source, neither in Russian nor in English, about the Russian closure. I was only able to find a marketplace source saying that the spring 2022 issue was the last one. PlayboyRussia.com doesn't work anymore and their Facebook page hasn't been updated since 13 March 2022, implying that's indeed the case. Could someone help with an RS about Russian closure? 212.180.235.46 (talk) 21:13, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The last cover captured by the Wayback Machine is that of the Winter 2021–2022 issue.[66] (Curiously, here is another cover of the Winter 2021–2022 issue, with the same model and the same cover text.) But we know the Spring 2022 issue was still published, from the cover image at your marketplace source. I found nothing for Summer 2022.
This is all OR, but the statement appears to be correct.  --Lambiam 22:32, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 7

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Looking for a country song by a female Canadian singer-songwriter...?

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There is a great country song I heard only once and I've been trying to find its title ever since: the lyrics are about a woman who is forced to kill a beautiful mountain lion that is attacking her colt and how bad she feels about it afterwards even though she had to do it. I remember the singer (I believe she also wrote the song) was female and from Canada. The song must have been recorded between 1980 and 2010. Does this ring a bell, anyone? 178.51.8.23 (talk) 18:28, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 8

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Van Heflin in World War II

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Van Heflin's article says first he served in a United States Army artillery unit (Smithsonian article, Oklahoma Historical Society), and later in the article as a United States Army Air Forces combat photographer in Europe as part of the First Motion Picture Unit (Smithsonian again, [67], [68]). It seems odd and unlikely to me that he did both, but I suppose it's not impossible (though none of the sources I've found mention both together). Can somebody figure this out? Clarityfiend (talk) 04:20, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Heflin had been a successful film actor before the US entered WWII in December 1941, as in the 1940 hit Santa Fe Trail. So when Owen Crump started recruiting in earnest for the First Motion Picture Unit from the Hollywood studios, it was not strange that they scooped up Heflin from active duty, just as they had done with Jimmy Stewart a few months earlier. While Heflin, like other First Motion Picture Unit actors such as Clark Gable, played a role in films shot by the 1st Combat Camera Unit, I do not readily see that he was active in the Combat Camera Unit itself. This would in fact have been strange, since he had no experience behind the camera.  --Lambiam 13:23, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Strange or not, the statement that Heflin served as a combat photographer can be cited to a RS – but this was before he joined the FMPU.  --Lambiam 10:46, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 9

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Effect of cricket ball hitting obstruction

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I'm on the train heading home from a Big Bash League match where a long shot hit a seagull: seagull was inside boundary, ball landed on seagull, ball bounced past boundary. It didn't have enough distance to be a six, but was obviously going to be a four if the bird hadn't been in the way, and it still ended up being a four, so there was no effect on the game. But let's imagine that the ball bounced backward, away from the boundary. Would it be awarded a boundary anyway (since its trajectory was changed by something that didn't belong on the field), or does the seagull interference get accepted just as if it hit a fielder? Not familiar enough with cricket to know how they handle wacky situations. But it does make me think of is baseball pitcher Randy Johnson when he accidentally hit a bird, which the umpires decided to rule not to be a pitch at all because it wasn't covered by the rules. Nyttend (talk) 12:48, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Particular competitions might have a special rule, but from
https://www.lords.org/mcc/the-laws-of-cricket/boundaries . . .
19.2.6 An obstacle within the field of play, other than as in 19.2.7, shall not be regarded as a boundary unless so determined by the umpires before the toss. See Law 2.3.1.4 (Consultation with captains).
19.2.7 A person, animal or object coming onto, or coming over the field of play while the ball is in play shall not be regarded as a boundary unless the umpires determine otherwise at the time that contact between the ball and such a person, animal or object is made. The decision shall be made for each separate occurrence. See also Law 20.4.2.12 (Umpire calling and signalling Dead ball).
and the Umpire calls the ball Dead when (amongst various other circumstances),
20.4.2.12 he/she considers that either side has been disadvantaged by a person, animal or other object within, or over, the field of play. However, if both umpires consider the ball would have reached the boundary regardless of the intervention, the boundary shall be awarded. See Law 19.2.7 (Identifying and marking the boundary).
Unusually, Kent's St Lawrence ground in Canterbury had a tree growing within the boundary, for which there were special laws. This however, was a fixed object, not a transient one. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 13:04, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 11

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Highest-grossing films

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Which is the highest-grossing Australian film ever? The top 50 highest-grossing films all-time were either made by US or backed by US. Which is highest-grossing film ever that does not have any US involvement at all? --40bus (talk) 20:03, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect the highest grossing Australian film is either The Great Gatsby (2013 film) or Crocodile Dundee. I might have missed one, but those are obvious hits. As for the second question The Battle at Lake Changjin surpassing Wolf Warrior 2 appears to be the answer. Other candidates will probably appear on List of highest-grossing non-English films since big-budget English language projects almost always have at least some Hollywood money/involvement because the North American box office is so much bigger than any other English language market. Eluchil404 (talk) 20:45, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 12

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Miscellaneous

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December 29

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Domains

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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)[reply]

See URL#Internationalized URL. PiusImpavidus (talk) 11:30, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]

Colored asphalt markings

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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. Brandmeistertalk 20:06, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]
See utility location. --142.112.149.206 (talk) 22:09, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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.[citation needed] -- Verbarson  talkedits 21:24, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks all. Brandmeistertalk 11:31, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 1

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Peugeot's rivalry

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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)[reply]

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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]

January 3

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British weather website

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Is there any British weather website which has daily data for stations in the United Kingdom? The starlingroot.ddns.net is not working anymore, it worked a few months ago. The "Historic station data" page on MetOffice's website has only monthly data, and the MetOffice WOW - Weather Observations Website has only hourly data. And is there any English-language website having weather observations for different cities and countries in Europe, similar to e.g. Infoclimat? --40bus (talk) 13:16, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You might find windfinder.com useful. Although primarily aimed at coastal leisure activities, it also covers inland areas. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.84.253 (talk) 03:07, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
wunderground.com used to have this. IDK about now. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:DA2D (talk) 18:47, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 4

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Goal number one

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How do you forgive and forget? (not sure if that's off-topic for the reference desk. if it is, sorry in advance.) TWOrantulaTM (enter the web) 05:47, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

By deciding to. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots06:05, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
One can decide to forget, but will it work?  --Lambiam 09:22, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Here is an essay on the topic, by a practitioner of mindfulness, that you may (or may not) find helpful. More advice: [69], [70] and (written from a Christian perspective) [71].  --Lambiam 09:32, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(OR, in that I have no published sources for this, though I was taught it by others): Forgiving does not necessarily mean forgetting - it also doesn't necessarily mean condoning. It means not carrying ill will. In my experience, once I see the cost (to me) of bearing the resentment, and how illusory are the apparent benefits of doing so, it is easy to choose to let it go. ColinFine (talk) 14:25, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Shall we forgive the OP for forgetting that we don't offer advice?DOR (ex-HK) (talk) 17:38, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'd suggest searching the web. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots17:47, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The injunction does not apply to all advice, but is aimed specifically at giving medical or legal advice.  --Lambiam 23:14, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]


                                      NonStopGo

One of the reasons I hurt myself quite so much last May was to make sure
that I stopped for long enough to arrive at this particular point. For only
through understanding can we see how to forgive both ourselves and other
people. In forgiveness there is love ; and although we can accept forgiveness
from others, true forgiveness comes solely from within. And only if we
love ourselves can we hope to achieve that shining state of grace which
is our true birthright and to find, finally, the gate which leads out of this
vale of tears : and opens for ever into the realms of eternal light.

7th July 2005

MinorProphet (talk) 05:42, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Westminster Coroner's Court

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I'm trying to research a sudden death that occurred in the London Borough of Merton. Please help me find information about Westminster Coroner's Court, also known as "Inner West London Coroner's Court". They appear to have no website, and publish no court listings. They claim that coroners records are closed to public access for 75 years.

But other coroners courts in the UK, for example "London Inner South Coroner’s Court", publish their court listings and say that inquests are public and anyone can attend.

Why is there are difference? Why is "London Inner South Coroner’s Court" open to the public, but "Inner West London Coroner's Court" is not? Surely all coroners courts operate under the same laws?

Thanks for your help Cylopi (talk) 12:41, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As you can see from [72] coroners' courts are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. I can assure you, however, that inquests held by the Westminster coroner are as public as inquests held by any other coroner. 2A00:23D0:54D:2001:7843:31E3:192B:798 (talk) 14:56, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Where can I find unmarried men list in Science/Maths?

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Like Brahmagupta, Issac Newton, Nicola Tesla, Arthur Eddington.

I want to exclude Archimedes due to his unknown marital status, Leonardo da Vinci as he have romantic relations and Galileo Galilei who has 3 children out of wedlock. HarryOrange (talk) 14:08, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have any reason to suppose that such a list exists, @HarryOrange? ColinFine (talk) 14:27, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just to encourage celibacy HarryOrange (talk) 14:30, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So, you've come here to ask people how to remove from a list that doesn't exist, some names that would probably belong only the list if it existed, because you have some private meaning of "unmarried"? ColinFine (talk) 12:56, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If some men don't (appear to) have sexual relationships with women, they're not necessarily demonstrating celibacy - they might be otherwise inclined. Chuntuk (talk) 11:37, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why did you pipe the correctly-spelled "Isaac" Newton to the incorrectly-spelled "Issac" Newton? -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 18:37, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And do the same strange thing to Nikola Tesla? Cullen328 (talk) 23:03, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Champagne explosion

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I had an unopened bottle of cheap champagne (Barefoot Rosé if that matters) left over from NYE, and about 10 minutes ago the thing spontaneously exploded. It had been just sitting there at room temperature. No serious damage but there is champange and broken glass all over the place now, and I'm in the process of cleaning it up. Are these explosions a usual occasional occurrence? I'm used to champagne bottles being thicker than regular wine bottles for obvious reasons, but this one seems on the thin side in retrospect, maybe as an economy measure. Could that be? I'm surprised it doesn't happen on store shelves if it happens at home. Thanks. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:DA2D (talk) 18:39, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I does happen.[73][74] Sometimes a cause can be identified. When a bottle of champagne is stored in a freezer, or a fridge whose temperature setting is too low, the contents may freeze, causing it to expand. This can lead to minute cracks in the glass, weakening its strength. Thawed in a relatively warm environment, the pressure of the gas can then result in fracture. Another potential cause is premature bottling, when fermentation has not run its fill course ands the wine still contains yeast and sugar. (Almost all wine sold as "champagne" in the US, also when labelled "Brut", contains residual sugar to accommodate the local taste.) When warmed up, fermentation resumes and pressure increases. Finally, a small fraction of bottles is damaged in handling or comes with production defects, not detectable through visual inspection.  --Lambiam 22:42, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. No idea about refrigeration before I bought it, but I got it off the shelf at a big supermarket, carried it home, and it sat in the exact same place in the room for several days before going kablooie. All I can think of is that carrying it home might have bumped it around or something. Oh well, no big deal in the scheme of things. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:DA2D (talk) 01:20, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The traditional method of making Champagne requires freezing it in the bottle, so I suppose most bottles are designed to handle that – although freezing from the bottom up is safer than top-down, as it creates no plug of ice between the liquid and the gas. If not using the traditional method, or if the wine doesn't come from the Champagne region, many countries (including all of the EU) forbid selling it under the name Champagne. The US however hasn't got that restriction.
Wines freeze around -5°C, so accidental freezing in a fridge set too cold seems unlikely. PiusImpavidus (talk) 11:15, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In this case the bottle had not been opened, but the cold liquid carbonated contents of a closed bottle may freeze upon opening due to cooling by adiabatic expansion of the CO2.  --Lambiam 13:57, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Once upon a time soda pop used to come in reusable glass bottles, and I read somewhere that this would happen from time to time with the larger sizes. And indeed, sometime around 1980 a large bottle of Coca-Cola, probably 1.5 liters, exploded while sitting in my cupboard. --142.112.149.206 (talk) 02:51, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Organizations

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Are there any international organizations headquartered in Australia, similar to UN and World Bank are headquartered in the US? --40bus (talk) 22:04, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We have a Category:International organisations based in Australia.  --Lambiam 23:05, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't this more or less the same question that you asked a month ago? Shantavira|feed me 09:55, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
An international organization is a completely different thing from a multinational company. --Viennese Waltz 11:38, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
yes but both questions are easily answered with even the most cursory research and 40bus here seems to have a habit of asking research questions. 208.121.35.65 (talk) 17:37, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 6

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Replacement for my My Yahoo page

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Not sure this is the correct venue, but here goes.

Yahoo have shut down all personal My Yahoo pages. For those who don't use Yahoo, your My Yahoo page was sort of your own personal webpage, where you could have various modules that interested you displayed (e.g. cartoons, horoscopes, travel, finance etc). Yahoo have closed My Yahoo down. A big feature of my personal My Yahoo page was that it had loads of links to my favourite websites. This loss is the one that is hurting most.

Any suggestions as to a replacement? Mjroots (talk) 10:15, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

MSN.com does that pretty well. --Viennese Waltz 10:25, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Could you explain in more detail how one can go about to create a personalized web space using MSN.com?  --Lambiam 12:29, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
[75] would be a start. That link is for UK users, presumably you can customize it to your own country. --Viennese Waltz 13:38, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps one of the content curation tools listed here, some of which are free, will serve your purposes. I have no knowledge of any of these tools beyond what you find there.  --Lambiam 12:34, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No modules, but there is Neocities. Actually, I may misunderstand: perhaps you seek a kind of home page which is online but available to you only, mainly for collecting bookmarks.  Card Zero  (talk) 13:53, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For those answering, while it appears to be a question asking how to make a basic list of links, it is not. Yahoo's links page was created by selecting modules through a GUI and then customizing the settings. For example, I could select the comics GUI and then select which comics I want to show up in my links. I don't need to know any of the URLs. I just place a check next to the comics I like. For finance, I add the module with a click and then type in the ticket symbols for the stocks I care about. It automatically creates a daily stock thumbnail with links to news articles about those stocks. So, it is true that there are many available options to create a list of links, there are not as many options to create a custom content page for multiple areas of personal interest. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 15:35, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The IP is correct, but as I said above, I can live without horoscopes, comics etc. The ability of easily store links to favourite websites is the biggest loss. @Card Zero: - it doesn't have to be for me only. I think that using a subpage of my user space will fall foul of WP:NOTWEBHOST #5, even though many (but not all) of the websites are used in Wikipedia research. Mjroots (talk) 15:39, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Does it have to be a website in that case? Why not browser bookmarks? In fact, I believe these days some browsers will let you select bookmarks for a "start page" or "start screen" that is displayed when you open a new window/tab. And if they don't, you can probably find a browser extension that will do that. -- Avocado (talk) 17:20, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Major traffic fatality incident, Denmark, 2019

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In 2019, Denmark had a minor spike in traffic fatalities. I feel that the spike is most likely the result of a single accident with multiple fatalities. However, I cannot find any news about multiple-fatality accidents in Denmark in 2019. Everything that I find is related to train accidents, which I do not think Denmark includes in "traffic fatality" counts. Can anyone find a list of accidents or news about a single large-scale accident that might skew the yearly count for 2019? 68.187.174.155 (talk) 15:25, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

First of all, where are you seeing this spike and is it a reliable source? Shantavira|feed me 09:55, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And is it even statistically significant? With unrelated events happening by chance, there will always be fluctuations in number of events by time period. Spikes will occur every now and then, entirely by chance.  --Lambiam 13:05, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I found this document (pdf) which seems to go into this matter in great detail. I don't read Danish, but I ran it though Google Translate. The table on page 28 shows that there were 199 traffic-related fatalities in Denmark in 2019, which is more than the two previous years but less than some earlier years. So I agree with the above posters that there is not enough here to constitute a spike. The document doesn't list individual accidents, btw. --Viennese Waltz 14:24, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The mean number of fatalities of the 10-year sample given in this Danish report is 194.9, while its estimated standard deviation is 27.3. This means that the 2019 value deviates from the mean by 0.15 sigma, which is more remarkable by how little the deviation is.  --Lambiam 23:54, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I saw this before and perhaps you are trying to recreate it. In 2019, traffic fatalities in Denmark increased 20%. But, they were so low that it was a small bump to make that 20% jump. The reason it matters is because the increase was used as the basis to use government funding for more bicycle lanes and improving intersections. But, the increase was not statistically significant and didn't mean anything, so it should not have been used as justification for any changes. Now, from memory, it was a multi-car, weather-related accident in January that added more than 10 fatalities to the yearly count. That was overshadowed by a train accident due to the same snowstorm which killed 8 (I remember it was 8 because most new articles listed 6, but some stated that a few days later, two more bodies were found). So, my gut feeling is that you are intending to show that this "20% spike" in traffic fatalities is really a data artifact created by a single large-scale accident and not representative of general driver behavior in Denmark. Unfortunately, I do not know how to search Danish news. But, if my memory is correct, you can use the date of the well documented train accident in Denmark in 2019 to get the date of the multi-car accident and then, hopefully, find that as well. I doubt you will find it in any English-based news repository. You will have to search Danish repositories. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 16:17, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. That is what I am doing. I found multiple overblown newspaper headlines like "Biggest increase in traffic fatalities in five years! Your mind will be blown when you see the numbers!" and I am using that to demonstrate that while it is technically true that there was a 20% increase in fatalities, the proper context around that increase is that it is negligible and the result of a single event that could have happened on any other year. Basically, it is a presentation on applying context to data and how it is often done improperly. Now that I know there was a multi-vehicle traffic accident at the same time as the train accident I keep finding, I decided to read those articles and many of them comment on the car accident as well as the train accident, but I didn't read through the articles to notice previously. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 13:15, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
According to the document linked by @Viennese Waltz, there were 199 deaths in 2019, compared to 171 the year before. That's a 16% increase, not 20%. On the other hand, it's an extra 28 people - so more than the result of a single incident. It just looks like random variation in a decade (the 2010's) that saw about 200 people killed every year on Denmark's roads. This decade it's been more like 150 a year, so if they spent a lot of money in 2019 it was worth it. You can further eamine annual figures here and here. Chuntuk (talk) 13:23, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What's 'this decade'? There tends to be some controversy especially with 2020 and 2021 figures since reduced traffic due to COVID-19 whether from lockdowns or just changes in behaviour e.g. with more working from home are often cited as reasons for reduced fatalities the. Nil Einne (talk) 10:34, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Neurodiverse dating site

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Is there website that shows with neurodiverse person goes well with which other neurodiverse, e.g. ADHD with Autism, Autism with HPI, HPI with dylexsia etc? --Donmust90-- Donmust90 (talk) 15:55, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For any combination of forms of neurodiversity, some persons will go well with each other, while others will not. This depends mainly on other factors, in particular the personality and personal value system of each.  --Lambiam 12:57, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 8

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Anthropology Wikipedia page

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Does anyone know why the Wikipedia page for "Anthropology" jumped to 6 million views on Dec. 25, 2024?[76]https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/?project=en.wiki.x.io&platform=all-access&agent=user&redirects=0&start=2024-12-18&end=2025-01-07&pages=Anthropology 136.26.125.34 (talk) 23:28, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Probably just a glitch. Such things happen all the time. Shantavira|feed me 09:54, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Previously, a spike for views of a particular page was due to some device or other (a digital assistant?) suggesting searching for the topic as part of its default demo or a tour of its features. Obviously I can't remember any specifics but it was along those lines. So a reasonable theory is that a lot of people got a device for Christmas that did something similar, although "try asking about anthropology" seems an unlikely way to show off a new phone's AI gimmicks, but maybe. Perhaps the spike was a side-effect of whatever the gadget really said.  Card Zero  (talk) 11:08, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Clearly, this is a result of extraterrestrial aliens abusing this article as a source for humanoid porn. Homo erectus and relatives are depicted in full frontal nudity which may excite the libidinous erectiles in our solar system, the Milky Way or the Andromeda Nebula. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 18:42, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 11

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Young adult novel series called Blitzkrieg

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Does anybody remember who was the author of a novel series, aimed at middle and high school students called Blitzkrieg? It was about a high school football team and I think it was or were published in the 1970s or 1980s. --Donmust90-- Donmust90 (talk) 00:49, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The series was actually called Blitz and was written by Paul Nichols (about whom we don't seem to have an article). There are some examples here. --Viennese Waltz 07:46, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Paul Nichols" is the pen name of Robert Hawks (b. 1961).[77] More about him here. He has also published under his own name,[78] as well as young-adult horror under the pen name "M. T. Coffin" :).[79] In any case, neither the author nor the books appear to meet Wikipedia's notability criteria.  --Lambiam 09:42, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

January 12

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