libroraptor

libroraptor, 14 hours ago

@kissane Not that it does much for people who've made up their minds already, but here's a little recent progress in case you ever come across a naysayer who thinks critically: https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/cmr.00124-23

libroraptor, 2 days ago

@jonoabroad @elronxenu

People appreciate blunt, pointed corrections from a copyeditor when they're worried about looking minutiae.

People also appreciate it from a mentor or developmental editor, without mentioning the specific instances, in broader advice about the techniques of crafting an impression about abstract attitudes and habits like "attention to detail", "critical thinking", "creative problem-solving".

Typos and English might be among the hardest things to advise on.

libroraptor, 2 days ago

@iangriffin Maybe you could get one of those little lapel badge things that turns black for drama.

We all used to feel that we got less exposure wearing those in our safety-conscious workplaces day-in, day-out than we did when flying. I used to have a neutron source set about two metres below the basement floor, past two locked doors and a padlocked cover. I lowered samples down on a string to expose them. My lapel badge was something of a let-down.

Same at the linac next-door.

libroraptor, 3 days ago

@skinnylatte I had a conversation about this related cases with an elder colleague back in my historian days at Rochester. He observed that the stories that the press tells – even the ones that purport to be disturbing – tend to be the affirming stories that make the system comfortable.

We were talking, in that case, about liberal education in China being sometimes markedly more liberal than in the US liberal arts colleges where our deans and presidents and newsletters claimed the opposite.

libroraptor, 3 days ago

@mythologymonday

One of my favourite myths told in museums is that all ancient cultures had a wide range of food and drink vessels that they never ate or drank from, but which were understood purely in terms of their forms – for ancients nourished only their souls.

That's why the krater and amphora are separated from the wine cups, and why there are no chopsticks in the "Asian ceramics" case.

libroraptor, 4 days ago

@inquiline I picked rhubarb yesterday afternoon. I was going to simmer it a little before putting setting it into a tart but I left it too long and the threads separated. Thus we have apple tart rather than rhubarb.

libroraptor, 4 days ago

@inquiline A sweet brioche case in a long tart tin, filled with vanilla crème patissière, then slices of rhubarb-become-apple, a dusting of cinnamon and brown sugar on top before baking.

There is still a LOT of rhubarb in the garden!

libroraptor, 6 days ago

@bananabob As much as I like reading this sort of stuff, it perturbs me that it garners so much more attention than even immediately pressing threats like Covid and climate change and dangerous pedestrian crossings and kennel cough.

And petty celebrity gossip, even more so.

libroraptor, 12 hours ago

@iangriffin Do you have any measurements that'd say what the particles are? (Much harder to get, I know – but maybe new-tech counters can do much more than the old-tech ones that I'm thinking of.)

libroraptor, 9 days ago

@compost if you let the hips ripen, you can eat those, too. The most common uses now are to cook them into jams, jellies and syrups, and to dry them for tisanes. If you go searching for older recipes, you'll find them also in soups and stews.

libroraptor, 11 days ago

@iangriffin Is that looking into the geomagnetic pole?

libroraptor, 14 days ago

@billbennett @BobLefridge @stojg Not everyone's on board with modernity, you know. Before modernity, we didn't even have cases. Only majuscules and minuscules, and for the most part you didn't mix them.

Something that newfangled is surely optional. It's only been a few hundred years.

It is something that I have always hated about computers, ever since I first got onto them. They push so hard, by design, towards American domination.

libroraptor, 21 days ago

@skinnylatte @jasonli "noodle" is a conundrum for me. I can't reconcile how it encompasses both 麵 and 粉. Because aren't those COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS?

Even "pasta" doesn't mix them together. But pasta does go in directions that most anglophones don't know about – it includes sweet breakfast breads, as in "pasta e cappuccino". What "pasta" really means is "paste" in the sense of dough, also still said in the anglophone baking industry (e.g. "shortpaste").

libroraptor, 21 days ago

@skinnylatte @jasonli Another fun one for translators is 豬腸粉 – the best way to look up steamers is "pig intestine powder".

The friendliest translations I've seen are "rice roll" and "rice noodle roll", both of which are too broad to be good. I think that we need to get past the monolingualish need to translate things that really don't translate at all.

The two that knocked me hardest are "Chinese tamales" and, as if one borrowing isn't enough, "raviolis chinois aux crevettes à la vapeur".

libroraptor, 21 days ago

@jasonli @skinnylatte One of the students from China brought 粽子 (or just 粽, as my uneducated peasant family say) to a party when we were at grad school together in the US. American professor lit up as soon as he saw them and exclaimed, "Chinese tamales!"

I lost control enough to cringe.

libroraptor, 21 days ago

@jasonli @geraineon @skinnylatte I tried that but no one got it.

How about nutella as Italian dousha?

Cabbage as English pak choy?

libroraptor, 22 days ago

@iangriffin Other astronomers I know are still there and have had, at the most, only brief Mastodon presences. I feel that the key difference is that you and I look at the sky and (at least in my case) at astrolabes in our hands; they look at data downloads and the outputs of filtering and pattern-matching on computer screens.

libroraptor, 21 days ago

@iangriffin Academics. They live in herd cults that they deny; many of them came over briefly but, unable to see the rest of their herd, promptly went back.

Academic concern about things like Musk-ethics rarely gets beyond theory. And vice chancellors work hard to keep it that way – my observation in both US and NZ academia is that just about every one who stands too openly for principle (versus standing for "senior leadership" and "strategy") is quickly sidelined.

libroraptor, 22 days ago

@skinnylatte Do you make your own 豆花？ Where I live, you can't buy it. And my own sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. I am getting the impression that I need to master soy milk first because, if the soy milk isn't right, and isn't consistent, there's no predicting how much gypsum to add.

What do you think?

libroraptor, 1 month ago

@dnc what are you going to do?

I see three ways forwards

1. cut the pots to liberate the roots

2. separate the pots to plant with the plants

3. cut the roots and trust that they'll regrow, maybe with better roots

Maybe you could do an experiment by implementing all three!

libroraptor, 1 month ago

@inquiline @tiamat271 Aristotle!

libroraptor, 1 month ago

@RichiH For diverse uses, how about an immersible unit rather than a bath?

Or a large bath – large enough that you can insert a smaller bath inside it. This is how we used to clean things in the lab that required a non-polar solvent like alcohol or acetone. Instead of a separate bath, we'd put the container into the water bath, in the manner of a bain marie. It could do with a different name – a bain someone-else. Does anyone rattly come to mind?

libroraptor, 1 month ago

@moira I call them swarf here in New Zealand. My machine shop teacher and the other old-man machinists I met in Connecticut had never heard that word and called them chips. What do you call them?