Wikipedia:Reference desk/all

October 26

Swimming the English Channel, legal aspects

Swimming the English Channel is a list of notable swimmers, plus details on a few specific swims. However, nothing's said about the legal/diplomatic aspects; from an international border perspective, how does swimming the Channel work? Must the successful swimmer present himself to the destination country's customs officials as soon as possible? I'm left wondering if perhaps this accomplishment is rare enough, and its attempts heavily publicised enough, that the customs authorities tend to make special allowances for it, as was done for Lynne Cox when she swam from the US to the Soviet Union (the Diomede Islands) during the Cold War. Nyttend (talk) 03:59, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Same as visitors arriving by boat. Even the first (failed) attempt with no artificial aid in 1872 had a support boat.
Sleigh (talk) 04:50, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

See https://www.channelswimmingassociation.com/swim-advice/administration-of-swims Nanonic (talk) 11:59, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

"If you intend to enter France instead of returning to England, you will need to enter as a normal visitor and comply with all the usual regulations (AND inform the CSA and your pilot well in advance that this is your plan).

You are permitted to land on the Beach and then return to your Escort Boat for the journey back to England .....but please note that all Swimmers and Passengers should carry their Passport (and any Visa, if appropriate) on the Escort Boat in case they are requested by the relevant Authorities to provide Proof of Identity either before, during, or after the Swim.

Be aware that escort boats can be boarded and occasionally are boarded." Nanonic (talk) 12:03, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

What a disgrace.

Is this what we defeated the Prussians for?

I mean, the Russians?

Does this include all arrivals to Northern France by water, or only those who weren't cut down by the Krauts' concentrated fire?

Al. M. G. 2004 (talk) 15:10, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

What car is that?

I wonder what car they are standing in front of in this picture:

Could someone identify it?

(Other automobiles in the picture are more easily dentified, probably because they are more common vehicles.)

Ove Raul (talk) 08:47, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

fiat coupe 850? 119.17.158.183 (talk) 10:54, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Already in the categories on the image: [1] Fiat 850 Coupé Andy Dingley (talk) 11:29, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Ah. Thank you! Ove Raul (talk) 16:05, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

October 27

Turquoise cheese and margarine

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (video game), there is a part which goes:

"The barman gives you a cheese sandwich. The bread is like the stuff that stereos come packed in, the cheese would be great for rubbing out spelling mistakes, and the margarine and pickle have performed an unedifying chemical reaction to produce something that shouldn't be, but is, turquoise. Since it is clearly unfit for human consumption, you are grateful to be charged only a pound for it."

I remember the turquoise thing from when I was a kid in the 1980s, so I can attest that it wasn't caused by mould, nor by the margarine being dyed. But what was it? I haven't seen it for decades, thankfully. Marnanel (talk) 17:38, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm not really sure what he's talking about (I was a young adult in Britain in the 1980s), but for the benefit of non-Britons, the "pickle" in question is Branston pickle or one of its imitators. Alansplodge (talk) 12:14, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps a reaction with garlic? [2], [3] --136.56.165.118 (talk) 14:25, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Good find, but there's no garlic in Branston pickle (I just looked at my jar). Alansplodge (talk) 19:55, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

But! The almost original recipe Branston pickle does contain garlic, according to food.com.  Card Zero  (talk) 09:04, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Wonderful. Thank you all! Marnanel (talk) 15:38, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

October 28

Did women having to wear skirts have anything to do with menstruation?

As in, before menstruation products became good and accessible, seems like pants would have been more prone to blood going through and been visible? Was it more of a menstruation taboo/norm thing than a blind sexism thing?

Couldn't find anything about this on the page Skirt nor the page Culture and menstruation. Wallby (talk) 07:50, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

More importantly, urinating. Abductive (reasoning) 10:45, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Maybe that explains kilts. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 10:52, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

I imagine it was originally more to do with preserving women's modesty, until hemlines shortened in the 20th century having the opposite effect. Note that today, most Orthodox Jewish women do not wear trousers for reasons of modesty. Alansplodge (talk) 12:23, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

The article Trousers as women's clothing may be of interest: menstruation is nowhere mentioned. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 12:34, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Isn't the real question why men started to wear trousers? In ancient times, weren't robes and such standard dress for all? --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:11, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Khajidha -- In ancient times, trousers were worn mainly by peoples who had a way of life which relied intensively on horse-riding. In the eyes of the Greeks and Romans, such peoples were barbarians, so that tunics and togas were considered civilized wear, as opposed to barbaric trousers. As barbarian tribes increasingly impinged on civilized zones of both the Roman and Persian empires, trousers became worn by cavalry soldiers, then more widely in societies. But well into the European middle ages, upper-class males or males with certain special statuses (such as priests), still often wore robes. Among ordinary people, the hemlines of men's tunics were often higher than those of women, but it wasn't until the roughly the 1400s that some men commonly exposed most of their legs (encased in leggings or "hose") in a way that would have been considered indecent if done by a woman. From then on, the trousers for men vs. dresses for women dichotomy developed, but male priests, males involved in formal academic ceremonies, and royals at coronation etc. ceremonies still sometimes wear robes today... AnonMoos (talk) 14:37, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Recurrent experimenting of meditative states and dancing shadows sessions in the obscurity of the dark backroom seem to have teached many an Emperor's adviser's ancestors that Truth that the most impressive allure which could be held - without having to appear mounted - was getting out of the shades with the same silhouette as the mountaineer out of the forest on a foggy Sunday Morning ( undocumented ). --Askedonty (talk) 20:15, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Ötzi the Iceman, 5300 before present, in his belongings had a rain cloak made of woven grass (see: esparto). Fully clothed with the cloak on he would have looked like a greyish bird of prey standing, only with bizarre appendices (his weapons), as seen from a distance. During the course of the two following millenia those with the same trade and skills will have had grass replaced with wool, much lighter tanned leather than previously, and other kinds of fabrics. This all only giving more dynamics in their appearance.

The lightest and longest (wikt:long#Adjective 13.) of such cloaks so had to become capes. They had to be seen sometimes floating in the wind.

There come the dancing shadows, only the heathstone was in an other place so that was the solitary flame of a small lamp that the spirituality minded was studying. Now one competing posture could be devised. A dynamic move leading upwards instead of more systematically downwards. And so, that would be the speaker who would be impersonating wind all by himself. That would not be in a place where you would have found necessary to cover your legs, otherwise than so. Sandals suffice. --Askedonty (talk) 21:11, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

The sarong is popular in tropical climes, perhaps in response to superficial fungal infections such as thrush. Doug butler (talk) 21:25, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Israel: Matriculation rate by religion

According to the most recent data, what's the % of people who have successfully passed Israel's high school matriculation examination among the population of the 18yo age group (not only among the students who sat for the exam)? (out of all How does this differ among religious groups? I found different numbers:

• 2019 ToI: "Fully 70.9% of Christian high schoolers achieve college-entry matriculation grades, slightly higher than Jews (70.6%), and higher still than Druze (63.7%) and Muslims (45.2%)."
• 2022 INN: "91.3% of Druze gain matriculation certificate compared to just 26.2 percent of haredi students."
• Druze_in_Israel#Educational_prospects: "According to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics census in 2020, 79.9% of Druze in Israel were entitled to a matriculation certificate, which was higher than the number of Muslims (60.3%), but was lower than the Christians (83.6%) and Jews (80.2%) with a matriculation certificate."
• Christianity_in_Israel#High_school_and_matriculation_exams: "In 2016 Arab Christians had the highest rates of success at matriculation examinations, namely 73.9%, both in comparison to Muslim and Druze Israelis (41% and 51.9% respectively), and to the students from the different branches of the Hebrew (majority Jewish) education system considered as one group (55.1%)."

a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 09:50, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

All kinds of things come to mind. The en.wiki and he.wiki don't say if you can take or retake the exam when you are, say, 19. The figures might be for all people, all Israeli citizens, all students (including or not dropouts), or just all students who got a high school completion diploma (perhaps just a snapshot collected in a particular year by calling around to the high schools). Abductive (reasoning) 10:50, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. Do we have the latest official data somewhere? a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 17:22, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

chief,

don't you answer your own question, when you give statistics from different years?

census in 2020' ... 'in 2016' ... 2019 and 2022 second-order sources as well, chief,

what percentage of israeli high-schoolers graduate high school (because the English article mentions a diploma, which is issued separately, simply for completion of twelve years of study, in the Israeli system)

compare this with the total population of this age cohort behind the allenby line, or what-have-you, and the percentage attaining bagrut, then you will have your answer

Al. M. G. 2004 (talk) 15:07, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Ramsese II colossus

You used to have images of Ramsesii colossus and how it was displayed. I cannot find the page and I looked all 75.99.255.115 (talk) 19:12, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Try Category:Ramses II colossal statue in Memphis over on Wikimedia Commons. Alansplodge (talk) 19:45, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

See also Statue of Ramesses II and Ramesses II § Building projects and monuments.  --Lambiam 11:09, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Longest recorded flight

What was the longest flight in world history? I'm strictly interested in duration, regardless of manned/unmanned status, refuelling, distance flown, etc.: the only limitation is that I'm not interested in spacecraft. Almost everything I find on Google is related to the longest scheduled airline flights. Flight endurance record addresses the question, but it bears {{Incomplete list}}, and all of its top-duration flights are small piston-engined or experimental solar-powered aircraft. The source for the longest one of all, [4], merely speaks of it as the "world endurance record in a propeller-driven airplane", so I'm further questioning whether there might be something longer, e.g. if a major country's military wanted to keep an important aircraft aloft at all times for a while. Nyttend (talk) 19:41, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Operation Power Flite (45 hours and 19 minutes) might be of interest. Alansplodge (talk) 19:52, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

The Rutan Voyager flew around the world in 216 hours without refueling, stopping, or exiting the atmosphere. --Amble (talk) 20:35, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

The Breitling Orbiter flew around the world in 478 hours. Despite the name, it was a balloon, not a spacecraft. --Amble (talk) 20:38, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

The Airbus Zephyr S is an unmanned aircraft that flew continuously for 64 days. --Amble (talk) 20:41, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

The longest item on the list I found, a Cessna 172, flew a little longer than the Airbus Zephyr. Nyttend (talk) 21:24, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

A Google Loon flew for 312 days in 2019-2020 [5]. —Amble (talk) 03:33, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

October 29

King of Albania: unfulfilled promises

From King of Albania:

While the medieval Kingdom of Albania was a monarchy, it did not encompass the entirety of modern Albania. Although discontent among Albanian nobles emerged by 1282 due to the Angevin king's unfulfilled promises, the kingdom did not end at that time.

What is meant by “unfulfilled promises?” The article provides no citation nor does it elaborate any further in the body. ―Howard • 🌽³³ 07:51, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Who puts a conjunction at the beginning of an introduction? That's horrible. Well, I restored the word "Angevin" from the first sentence, which was removed two edits ago by an IP editor without explanation, and now you have a bit more context. I think you're supposed to read the article Regnum Albaniæ (good luck typing that), AKA Kingdom of Albania (medieval), where we read (buried mid-paragraph halfway down the second section!) Charles signed a treaty with them and was proclaimed King of Albania "by common consent of the bishops, counts, barons, soldiers and citizens" promising to protect them and to honor the privileges they had from Byzantine Empire. Then further on, Charles of Anjou imposed a military rule on Kingdom of Albania. The autonomy and privileges promised in the treaty were "de facto" abolished and new taxes were imposed. Lands were confiscated in favor of Anjou nobles and Albanian nobles were excluded from their governmental tasks. In an attempt to enforce his rule and local loyalty, Charles I, took as hostages the sons of local noblemen. This created a general discontent ... did it really, you surprise me. Anyway everything about an article whose introductory sentences require close reading of another article for context is terrible. Somebody who isn't me should definitely fix this.  Card Zero  (talk) 08:28, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, I am satisfied with this answer. ―Howard • 🌽³³ 08:37, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Contingent Elections in the US House of Representatives

I have been trying to determine how Trump might interfere with the election, and it seems clear that he is aiming for a contingent election in the House of Representatives. This would occur if neither candidate received 270 or more electoral votes. I assume that the procedure would be to stall or prevent the certificates of the electors to be sent to Congress. I am a little uncertain on how certificates could be blocked or stalled from the states, and I have received conflicting answers. How could this occur, and is there any legal remedy to force certificates to be sent from the slate of electors? 2600:8807:C306:A200:48E:DBF5:EC65:9227 (talk) 01:48, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022 was passed to avoid some of these scenarios. Under the US Constitution, the state legislatures have ultimate authority over the electoral college votes of each state, but if legislators made last-minute procedural changes AFTER an election whose result they didn't like, that would be very problematic (the Constitution also forbids "ex post facto laws"... AnonMoos (talk) 02:26, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

I am afraid there is little (other than the threat of imprisonment) stopping a state's governor from certifying a different slate of electors than those actually elected. Another scary scenario is that the chaos in a state is so overwhelming that no one has any certainty about the winner when December 17 arrives, so it is unknown who the electors are that should meet that day.  --Lambiam 12:47, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

yes, there is little, other than his own convictions, his loyalty to the Republic, to stop him, although, such compunctions are marred by the constant fearmongering of legacy media about the 'fascist' trump, the 'threat' to the democratic system, which, as it would seem to any observer without the trained eyes of NYT columnists, who refer to Sumy as a village, who raise alarm over Chinese 'pillers' on the Nepalese border, who, who, it's incredible, you know,

I am sure that plenty of happy accidents, organized by our dear friends in Langley, would ensue, precluding any such eventuality

but you shouldn't worry, because you know that we will carry in the states which Howard Dean famously enumerated, and in yet more, such that even before the sun has descended beyond the Aleutians no contention will remain 130.74.59.162 (talk) 15:03, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

No, I don't know this. You evidently possess a secret source of information to which I have no access.  --Lambiam 17:45, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

The Mississippi IP's secret source is probably QAnon. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:48, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

My sources are Nate Silver, Allan Lichtman, the Times, and the Post 130.74.59.32 (talk) 22:17, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

And QAnon. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:30, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

bless your heart 130.74.59.32 (talk) 22:44, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

you see, it's the most beautiful thing.

stunning, tremendous.

the whole country has shifted to the right 130.74.58.174 (talk) 13:14, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

The question assumes facts not in evidence. Why do you think Trump is aiming to send the election into the House? I wouldn't be surprised if that's a backup plan somewhere in his group, but at the moment he seems to have at least a fair shot at just winning the Electoral College outright, which seems much more straightforward and less fraught. --Trovatore (talk) 22:54, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you,

setting aside all sectional contentions, I hope that it will be for the best,

and that the general tariffs will not exceed the promised figure of two hundred per cent,

a rude awakening and sharp adjustment, necessary for the survival of our Country and for final victory, after decades of the exercise of the establishment of great hubris in faith in the 'end of history', and even in 'nearshoring' to such locales as Indonesia and the Philippines in the face of looming global war, the submarine and hypersonic menace, war assuming the character of a game with perfect knowledge, etc., etc.

Two hundred percent! A thousand percent import duty! A wall in front of the First Island Chain, up from the seabed! The bill delivered to Zhongnanhai!

A truce in Ukraine for victory in the Far East, because Russia is an obstacle to China,

and we are contending ultimately with the Chinese ...

Not even radical life extension, not even biological immortality can bring about the End of History, although, one hopes that Fukuyama will see this borne out 130.74.59.32 (talk) 130.74.59.32 (talk) 23:29, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

You sound like a looney. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:07, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

I am a stable genius. 130.74.59.29 (talk) 03:44, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Mister Ed!?  Card Zero  (talk) 08:38, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Welp… This thread didn’t age well, did it? No need for a “plan B” when “plan A” (win the election outright) works. Blueboar (talk) 13:43, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

October 30

Is ביתדוד a partial reconstruction in the Tel Dan stele?

This subtler one still seems to have light colorant...

I haven't seen another inscription where they color in letters for legibility...

...Other than in copies like this Siloam inscription reproduction

I thought I'd read the w was an inferred and reconstructed letter in bitdwd but that's not mentioned on its page. I may be mistaken. What was the first paper to include the Davidic conclusion? Are the images in the Wikimedia category reproductions? The text is inscribed with unusual clarity, including the pertinent.

Temerarius (talk) 20:25, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

I'd say the 2nd image is a photo from a museum. I don't think the highlighting looks like it was added by the user, it looks like it was a photo of a photo from a different museum exhibit than the one in the first photo. Andre🚐 20:30, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps you're thinking of the Mesha Stele, which has also been claimed to refer to the House of David? In that case some of the letters are damaged and have to be reconstructed. --Amble (talk) 21:28, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, Amble, thank you! I think that's exactly how my memory went wrong.

Temerarius (talk) 22:25, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

November 1

Has George Will endorsed anyone in the coming U.S. presidential election?

As I was saying: Does anyone know of an endorsement by George Will in the coming U.S. presidential election? Did he say explicitly that he's not endorsing anyone? 178.51.16.158 (talk) 01:12, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Harris.[6] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:30, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

"In September 2024, Will announced that he would vote for Kamala Harris in the 2024 United States presidential election." This statement was added to our article on George Will on September 17. Then still somewhat hidden deep down in the article, this information was added to its lead section the next day.  --Lambiam 07:20, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Worth checking the article first, hunh? I'll have to keep reminding myself! 178.51.16.158 (talk) 18:36, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

I grew up reading George Will. The irony is that he's the reason we got Trump as a president, twice. Viriditas (talk) 23:01, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Did he endorse Trump in 2016? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:02, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm talking about Will's philosophy vis-à-vis libertarianism, not who he endorses or supports. When I grew up, Will was a huge cheerleader for Reagan, which is how we got into this mess. Reagan, via Paul Weyrich and others, opened the floodgates for the Christian nationalists, who now believe Russia leads the world in maintaining and preserving conservative Christianity. American Christian nationalists believe that democracy is a threat to Christianity, a bizarre idea that led them to forge alliances with Russia and eventually, Trump. You don't have to believe me, but those are the facts. The Heritage Foundation was funded by the same libertarians Will supported, and who are now tasked with converting the US into a hybrid, corporate-theocratic governing body. Viriditas (talk) 10:22, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

You might be overstating Will's influence. If you want to blame someone, you could blame Goldwater. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:49, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

What a fun game. I blame Roosevelt. fiveby(zero) 13:03, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Or more specifically, Roosevelt's opponents. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:41, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Like blaming Burr for not shooting that bastard soon enough? fiveby(zero) 17:17, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Will’s influence on Americans was substantial. He made a case for Reaganomics being as natural as baseball and apple pie. Except 40 years on, we know he was wrong. The largest fruit of Reagan was financialization, which destroys every sector it touches, weakens nations, encourages fascism, and promotes inequality. Viriditas (talk) 04:51, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

How do companies spin off subsidiaries of the parent company?

How do companies spin off subsidiaries of the parent company? What is the process of spinning off subsidiaries? Do the parent company sell shares of the spin off company to its shareholders WJetChao (talk) 03:15, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

The processes of spinning-off a subsidiary are: first, the parent company groups the line of business to form a subsidiary; second, the parent company transfers the relevant assets to the newly formed subsidiary. Third, the parent company distributes the newly formed subsidiary’s shares to existing shareholders on a pro rata basis as a special dividend. Finally, the newly formed subsidiary is listed separately as an independent company and probably it will also issue and sell shares to the public (the process is called initial public offering or IPO). Stanleykswong (talk) 08:36, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Searching for a PD image of the seal of Patriarch Amalric

I am a bit frustrated. In a snippet view of Sigillographie de l'Orient latin I see that it probably contains an image of the seal of Amalric of Nesle, Latin patriarch of Jerusalem. It is presumably the image of the seal depicted at this site too. Alternatively it might be showing the patriarch's bulla, like this one. The book is in public domain and so we could use its images of seals, but I cannot find it online. This time last year I asked here for help regarding another seal from the same book, and Lambiam and Alansplodge brilliantly found it in another book, but I am not sure that will work now. I will also ask at WP:RX. Surtsicna (talk) 09:07, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

There's a copy of that book on archive.org here. I can't seem to connect to it at the moment, I'm not sure if this is a general issue or my sketchy internet connection. Alansplodge (talk) 13:24, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately it is misidentified, Alansplodge. That is another book, which can be seen from the title on its cover. And yes, I too have had troubles with archive.org lately. Surtsicna (talk) 13:59, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Ah yes, apologies. The Hathi Trust catalogue record has a publication date of 1943 and says that it "is not available online - search only — due to copyright restrictions". Alansplodge (talk) 16:35, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

I found a reference to "la bulle de plomb du roi de Jérusalem, Amauri I^er (1162–1173), qui a été publiée par M. le Marquis de Vogüé⁽¹⁾".^[7] The reference is to: Melchior de Vogüé, "Monnaies inédites des croisades", la Revue numismatique 1864, pp. 275–293 & pl. XIII, nr. 1.  --Lambiam 18:19, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Isn't that Amalric of Jerusalem? fiveby(zero) 18:31, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes, sorry.  --Lambiam 18:41, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

See WP:RX came through. The seal image is taken from the lost Anastasis mosaic correct? Looks similar to that in the Melisende Psalter. fiveby(zero) 18:08, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Is this photo of the seal of Amalric at Dumbarton Oaks public domain? (Or is this photo of a different seal from doaks.org on Commons not really PD as claimed? Or maybe that user patiently went through the request process.) Edit: yes, I think you can upload that to Commons, assuming they photographed it in the US and it counts as two-dimensional. It is unfortunately worn-out and lacks details (such as a face) and the one that was in the auction house Is much nicer.  Card Zero  (talk) 20:32, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

I received the page from Bsoyka at WP:RX. I must say that exceeded my expectations. Unfortunately, there is no image at all on those pages. Instead the book seems to point to the same source in which Lambiam found last year's seal: this book. I do not see Amalric's seal there, however. The only seal of a patriarch I see is that of William of Malines (though that too would be worth uploading). Surtsicna (talk) 18:34, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

(I'm not familiar with the subject matter here, but definitely reach out if I can try to provide any other book scans or other resources. I can access millions of items in some way or another, and I'm always happy to share them.) Bsoyka (t • c • g) 19:02, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Considering that the auction house that sold the fine quality seal is Swiss, wouldn't their photo be public domain?  Card Zero  (talk) 21:17, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Card_Zero, as far as I know, seals are considered three-dimensional and so any photograph of a seal counts as an original work of art. At least that is why Wikimedia Commons is so severely lacking in seals and we have to resort to 19th-century hand-drawn reproductions. Surtsicna (talk) 19:27, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Russo-Korean war

Norway–Russia border says this:

Yet the Russia–Norway border is the only one of Russia's borders where an open war between the two bordering countries has not taken place.

The next sentence goes on to exclude the Petsamo–Kirkenes offensive, between Russia and German soldiers on site during the Second World War, so clearly it's talking about the current country rather than past occupiers.

Has there ever been open warfare between Russia and North Korea, or between Russia and Korea before 1945? (There is no Russo-Korean War article.) Not knowing much about the geography of the region, I'm unsure whether anything in the Russo-Japanese War article covers this border (even if Japanese control of Korea is treated differently from German control of Norway), and basically all I know about the war is naval anyway. The Soviet–Japanese War article likewise doesn't convey much to me, aside from the fact that the conflict was largely in Manchuria and Pacific islands; all I can see in Korea is related to invasion from Manchuria and an amphibious assault that didn't involve the border zone. Nyttend (talk) 19:16, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Soviet forces began amphibious landings in Korea by 14 August [1945] and rapidly took over the northeast of the country, and on 16 August they landed at Wonsan. from Division of Korea#Liberation, confusion, and conflict. However, Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945. Alansplodge (talk) 23:39, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

So basically, no, Soviet forces didn't cross the border against the Japanese in 1945. What about at any time outside the Japanese suzerainty? Nyttend (talk) 19:06, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't recall Russia having any wars with Belarus, Azerbaijan, Mongolia, Kazakhstan... Was there "an open war" with the USA on the Chukotka-Alaska border? In any case, Nordsletten hardly qualifies as an authority on Russian history. Ghirla^-трёп- 19:32, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

All of those countries were part of the Imperial Russian empire, so I assume they were conquered by force at some point. It depends how much continuity you assume between modern Russia and it's Tsarist predecessor, and those states and whoever was governing that region in the past. Chuntuk (talk) 12:12, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm afraid you are wrong. Mongolia was never a part of the Russian Empire. Neither Kazakhstan nor Belarus were "conquered by force". In effect, Nordsletten's odd claim is a just another black legend about Russia (which en.wiki has been inundated with). Ghirla^-трёп- 21:39, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

What about the Soviet intervention in Mongolia#Soviet invasion of Mongolia in 1921? Not quite a straight conflict between Russia as such and Mongolia as such, but not far short, and on or around their mutual border. [Disclaimer: I have no personal interest in any of this, merely in maintaining Wikipedia's accuracy.] {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.7.95.48 (talk) 17:44, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

The Russo-Japanese War was largely fought around and about Korea, and there was fighting such as the Battle of the Yalu River on the Korean border. The battles were not fought at the small modern Russian-Korean border, though. There was fighting between the Soviet Union and the Empire of Japan in 1938 at the Battle of Lake Khasan, very near the triple point between Russia, China, and North Korea, although not quite on the Russian-North Korean portion. --Amble (talk) 21:39, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

November 2

Indian princely state

Suzerainty#India refers to a tiny state of Babri, "with a population of 27 people and annual revenue of 80 rupees". Do we have an article on it anywhere? Babri redirects to Babri Masjid, a mosque at the centre of a long-running politico-religious controversy in India; Babri (state) doesn't exist; and Special:Search/Babri mostly contains references to the Babri Masjid with a few random other things like Helvijs Babris. Nyttend (talk) 19:21, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

There were many hundreds of princely states, 485 in Western India States Agency alone, and as that article says some were little more than villages or farms. DuncanHill (talk) 19:35, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Wow, I had no idea there were so many tiny ones; I figured most princely states were on the level of Faridkot or Bussahir at least. How didn't the tiny ones get conquered and amalgamated centuries earlier? Nyttend (talk) 20:50, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

I think the very small ones were early John Company grants to local tax-gatherers and the like, that never got tidied up. If the right tax or tribute was paid, and no real trouble arose, there wasn't any real imperative to change things. The source used for Babri in the Suzerainty article looks like it's quoting another work, but I don't know which one. I don't know of a definitive list, I suspect you could work your way through the articles in Category:Agencies of British India, but even then I doubt we name them all. DuncanHill (talk) 22:20, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Interesting. I figured it would be in the Company's best interests and the Mughal emperors' best interests to mediatise little states — fewer states with imperial immediacy means less bureaucracy to deal with all your subject states, and fewer subject rulers who can cause local problems for you — so I assumed that little states were left over from tumultuous times in the past. Nyttend (talk) 20:29, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

But lots of little states, especially if they are rivals to one another, are less of a threat to your ongoing control than a few big ones would be. Divide and conquer, as they say. Chuntuk (talk) 13:39, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Nyttend -- there were a lot of tiny estates of Imperial Knights in the Holy Roman empire, until the Napoleonic wars caused a consolidation. AnonMoos (talk) 18:42, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

It's a small print-sly state. Clarityfiend (talk) 04:50, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

i double over 130.74.58.20 (talk) 03:24, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

November 4

Looking for article about gullibility of conservatives

Today I came across a scholarly paper about how US conservatives are more susceptible to believing falsehoods than non-conservatives, and then to my surprise I found other reliable sources providing in-depthreporting on this phenomenon — enough sources to establish notability for the topic.

Because the studies have been out for a few years, I thought I'd find a Wikipedia article about it, but I can't find one. I would be surprised if it hasn't been written yet, so I suspect I'm searching for the wrong thing. Do we have such an article, or should I start drafting one? ~Anachronist (talk) 23:43, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

It would be better to add such material to the Conservatism article itself, both to have it vetted by the community, and because it will get read a lot more there. That article already has a section on Psychology with subsections Conscientiousness, Disgust sensitivity, Authoritarianism, Ambiguity intolerance, Social dominance orientation, and Happiness. Abductive (reasoning) 03:59, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Hmm. That's a broad-subject article, and this topic of gullibility seems to be restricted to the United States, not conservatives in general. ~Anachronist (talk) 15:29, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Well, we have a Conservatism in the United States article that you could consider. Nyttend (talk) 19:33, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

It's not even really traditional philosophical conservatives, it's conspiratorial populists (some would say pseudo-populists) who are inheritors of the traditions discussed in the classic book The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter. AnonMoos (talk) 17:51, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

This kind of studies is about:

First, finding out the correlation between level of conservativeness (of a person) and how (he or she is) susceptible to believing falsehoods. In the wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_States, it mentioned “American conservatism is a large and mainstream ideology in the Republican Party and nation”. But the ideology is not a single dimension concept, how to measure ideology is difficult and different ways to measure ideology may give different results. Moreover, it is even more difficult to measure believing. There are many existing scales to measure believing, but none of them is comprehensive. Also, the world is not black and white, it is difficult to measure falsehoods.

Second, establishing the causal relationship is also difficult. Given that you can successfully establish the correlation, how can you prove that the causality is not a reverse, i.e. people who are more susceptible to believing falsehoods tend to being conservatives.

Therefore, I doubt whether there is a credible scholarly paper about this topic. But I think if you can sort out the definition and measurement problems, and you can establish the causal relationship in a convincing way, it could be a good research. Stanleykswong (talk) 11:30, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

I believe it will be much easier to find references discussing how political extremists (on both sides) are more gullible. It isn't just politics. Religious extremists are more gullible. Racists extremists are more gullible. Gender rights extremists are more gullible. My personal opinion is that being gullible leads to becoming an extremist, but I am sure thare are many cases of brainwashing that lead to gullibility. It reminds me of a conversation I had with a young man many years ago. It came up that he was a Marine and I said that he didn't talk or act like a Marine. He said that the Marine attitude is forced through standard brainwashing techniques in boot camp, but if you know what the methods are and you know they are being used on you, they aren't very effective. So, another way to phrase that is if you are not gullible about the situation you are in, brainwashing attempts by other extremeists are less effective. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 12:45, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

I agree with you that it is much easier to establish a link between extremists and gullibility. Also, brainwashing plays a key role. But I’m not sure what affects what. Are extremists more gullible or it is easier to turn gullible people into extremists? However, there is no doubt that brainwashing is an important moderating variable that affects the strength of the link between extremists and gullibility. Stanleykswong (talk) 13:59, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

I also agree with you that if a person knows about what brainwashing methods can be used on him/her, brainwashing will be less effective. The question is how to collect data for a robust scholarly research. Stanleykswong (talk) 14:02, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

That is outside my realm as a reference librarian. I can give observations. I have observed multiple times that many scientists do not consider psychology to be science because you cannot do proper scientific research. In this specific case, there is no scientific measure of gullibility. There is no scientific measure of extremism. First, you need multiple publications to agree to a metric of each one. Then, you can get data to work with. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 14:15, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Here is the study: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abf1234 ~Anachronist (talk) 15:06, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

I have been searching. I found opinion pieces. I don't trust those. I found multiple psychology articles that basically state that there is no correlation between being conservative and being biased (gullible) more than what is observed in liberals. There are more articles in recent times that tend to refer to modern politics as "post-truth." I haven't found anything remotely scientific. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 18:12, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

The paper used a very interesting research method. Stanleykswong (talk) 18:47, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

November 5

About a possible English language article for Egyptian poet Samir Darwish?

Hello all,

Copied from this over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Egypt.

Yo no hablo árabe - aiuto, per favor.

Shirt58 (talk) 🦘 Shirt58 (talk) 🦘 09:33, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're asking @Shirt58. As usual in a volunteer project, the best (and nearly the only) way to get somebody else to work on a particular article is to engage somebody's interest - and that is most likely to be somebody who already has some interest in the topic. So the WikiProject, where you've already asked, seems more likely to find somebody than posting here. ColinFine (talk) 10:38, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

You can request an article on the poet at Wikipedia:Requested articles/Arts and entertainment/Literature § Authors (poets, novelists and fiction writers). Be sure to include a reference to the article on the Arabic Wikipedia.  --Lambiam 08:14, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Childe Hassam "California" (1919)

California (1919)

There's a painting on Commons and elsewhere that says it's by American Impressionist Childe Hassam named California, and is said to have been dated to 1919. It was apparently auctioned by Christie's in 2017.[8] But I'm curious where in California this depiction is supposed to be from as it doesn't ring any bells. Hassam was known to stylize his paintings such that they would deviate from actual representations, most notably in his depiction of Point Lobos in 1914, where another artist voiced a complaint about this style. Viriditas (talk) 22:12, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Sources I can find have Hassam in and around San Francisco, but the painting does not look like the Bay Area. The foreground scene looks like the shore of Lake Tahoe, but the mountain peak does not. It looks more like Shasta or Lassen if anything. The bountiful harvest stacked up by the shore suggests it's more idealized than a real place. --Amble (talk) 00:47, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Shasta does seem more likely, but even Shasta doesn't look like that. I know Tahoe like the back of my hand, and that isn't it. I've only visited Lassen once, and I think that could be it. Viriditas (talk) 02:14, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Lake Helen at the base of Lassen Peak

The painting is much less representational than most of Hassam's work and reminds me a bit of an illustration for a children's book, but it does bear a certain resemblance to this photo of Lake Helen and Mount Lassen. Cullen328 (talk) 08:47, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Mount Shasta and Lake Siskiyou

As for the possibility that it might be Mount Shasta, I doubt it. The classic lake view of Shasta is from Lake Siskiyou, and from that angle, the secondary peak Shastina is clearly visible to the left, resulting in in the memorable and distinctive double humped skyline. Cullen328 (talk) 08:59, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. Viriditas (talk) 09:37, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Hassam did travel extensively in Oregon and Washington several years before he visited California, and he painted Hood and Saint Helens at least. I wonder if he may have drawn on those for his idealized California. —Amble (talk) 16:30, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

I think you’re right. Viriditas (talk) 04:49, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

November 6

Does anyone know where the White House YT channel gets their orchestral background music from?

Do they compose it themselves or is it merely licensed from a third party? I cannot find anything about this Trade (talk) 15:16, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

I listened to it. It sounds incredibly simple and basic, probably requiring a single computer workstation and a keyboard. In the clip you provide, you can hear a few notes/chords, and some effects. It's not a big deal and takes about 20 minutes to put together if you know what you're doing. Your confusion arises from thinking this is some kind of live orchestra. It's not. It's pretty obvious it's one person and a keyboard making those sounds. Viriditas (talk) 22:00, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

November 7

Block evasion.

This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
It was founded in Hyuga, Miyazaki Prefecture, in 1918, but relocated to Saitama in 1939 due a dam's construction. What is that dam's name? The German article gives coordinates that places the village next to Kawabaru Dam. --Wrongfilter (talk) ok, thank you.

Turkey bone

What happens when an American president-elect chokes to death on a turkey bone on Christmas Day, before inauguration in January, while he is still an ordinary citizen? The vice president-elect is still an ordinary citizen, too.

Since the president-elect is not a sitting president, then a president has not died therefore the vice president-elect cannot succeed a non-president?

Any resemblance in this question to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Only the turkey is real. Spideog (talk) 09:19, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Spideog, the Twentieth Amendment to the United States Constitution says that if the president-elect dies before inauguration day, the vice president-elect gets sworn in instead. The issue is precisely when the winner legally becomes president-elect. One could argue that would be January 6 when Congresss certifies the electoral vote count. On the other hand, presidential transition legislation kicks in pretty early, and I read that Trump's transition team signed a lease for office space with the GSA today. Here is a relevant GSA press release.

See Second presidential transition of Donald Trump and United States presidential transition. Were Trump to die on Christmas Day, I suspect that there might be some legal maneuvering but I am pretty confident that JD Vance would be sworn in on January 20, 2025. Cullen328 (talk) 09:36, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

@Cullen328: Thank you for your reply. Had I anyone actually in mind, your reply could have dashed my hopes, however, for legal reasons, "only the turkey is real". Spideog (talk) 09:43, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

President-elect of the United States notes that the US Code has a term for an individual in Trump's and Vance's current positions, "apparent successful candidates", given the need for months of transition. However, Trump hasn't actually been elected president yet — theoretically, there's nothing preventing all the Republican electors voting for Vance-Trump instead of Trump-Vance — so at the minimum, his special status for succession purposes doesn't start until the actual election in mid-December. Were he to die before then, the 1872 United States presidential election has a precedent, although it had no practical effect because the deceased candidate in that election was analogous to Harris, not Trump. Nyttend (talk) 22:08, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Format of US congressional committee testimony

Testimony in 1924

Testimony in 2023

Whenever I see older pictures of congressional committee testimony, the members are just sitting around a table with the person who's testifying; the physical format is very different from today, when the members all sit in a long line or two, facing the speaker who sits at a table or stands at a podium in front of the centre of the line of members. When did this change, and why? I'm guessing that the "why" is related to television news (the members all know each other and don't need the "Mr Soandso" signs, but they're useful for TV viewers; maybe the viewer-friendly format is meant for casual viewers too), but no idea when. Nyttend (talk) 20:46, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

The Army-McCarthy hearings were probably the first to be intensively televised (as far as that was possible in 1954), and from what I can tell from searching in Google Images, used the table format... AnonMoos (talk) 01:13, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

October 26

Launch site identification

I am currently on a bridge on the Florida State Road 528 facing north, getting ready to view the Spacex launch[9] later today.

But I am not sure which one is the launch site that I should be looking at. I spotted 5 points of interest[10] (labelled A to E), and I can only positively identify A as the kennedy space center (which is not today's launch site).

I would really appreciate it if someone can tell me whether I should be looking at BCD or E. And also I'm interested to learn what BCDE each are. Epideurus (talk) 20:09, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

My exact location is 28.405476616667123, -80.65458604061091. Epideurus (talk) 20:31, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

At a guess, I'd say that I'd agree with your identification of "A" as the Vehicle Assembly Building at the JFK Space Center. My tentative identification of C and D are the Titan Solid Motor Assembly And Readiness Facility and the Titan Solid Motor Assembly building. E is possibly Cape Canaveral Space Launch Complex 37. PianoDan (talk) 17:47, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

October 27

Can sterile neutrinos (if exist) decay, if there don't really exist virtual particles?

The background of my question is the following two facts:

Our artricle sterile neutrino states: The production and decay of sterile neutrinos could happen through the mixing with virtual ("off mass shell") neutrinos.

While our article Virtual particles states: they are by no means a necessary feature of QFT, but rather are mathematical conveniences — as demonstrated by lattice field theory, which avoids using the concept altogether.

HOTmag (talk) 06:34, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

The statement that "x could happen if y" does not in itself exclude the possibilities that (absent y) x could also happen if z, or w, etc. Frankly, this is all so deep in the Jungles of Conjecture (that vast expanse beyond the Mountains of Hypotheses) that definitive answers probably don't yet exist, and Nobel prizes will probably be given for finding answers to such questions. Or so I think: perhaps some post-doctoral particle physicist will correct me. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 12:53, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

As for your first sentence: Of course. I didn't think otherwise. HOTmag (talk) 13:04, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Does anything "really" exist? If we answer yes, what does it mean to "really" exist? We have models that make observable predictions. We say that atoms exist because the predictions of the atomic model were actually observed. One observable prediction of virtual particles is the Casimir effect, which was experimentally observed. They lack the stability of other particles, just like the waves that make the surf have no long-time stability. It may be possible to develop a form of hydrodynamic theory that accurately describes the observable effects of surf without introducing the concept of a wave. Does this then mean these waves do not "really" exist?  --Lambiam 16:45, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Are you responding to me, or (also?) to the quote I quoted from our article virtual particle? HOTmag (talk) 18:40, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I am mainly responding to the question as formulated in the heading of this thread. The question is unanswerable if the meaning of "really exist" is not clear (which it isn't).  --Lambiam 05:26, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Let's put it this way: Do you agree to the content of the second quote under the header? IMO, it actually says that there don't necessarily exist virtual particles. This is what I meant by "don't really exist". But if you think it says something else, you're invited to tell what you think it says.

(Re. Casimir effect, its article in Wikipedia states: Although the Casimir effect can be expressed in terms of virtual particles interacting with the objects, it is best described and more easily calculated in terms of the zero-point energy of a quantized field in the intervening space between the objects).

HOTmag (talk) 06:32, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

I think it is theoretically possible to develop QCD and QFT to such an extent that it successfully describes macroscopically observable events without introducing the concept of particle. However, this theory would be extremely unwieldy and in practice mathematically untractable – and therefore pretty useless. Particles are a mathematical convenience, but a convenience we cannot do without. It may be possible that some practical version of QFT avoids the concept of virtual particle, but lattice field theory is not an alternative to QFT but a collection of mathematical approaches for obtaining QFT predictions by computer simulation. It is itself a mathematical convenience. Therefore, in my opinion, the sentence relegating virtual particles to a status of mere mathematical conveniences is not so much false as misleading.  --Lambiam 19:28, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Resolved

According to this video: "It's an easier transition from sterile neutrino to electron-neutrino".

So indeed, perhaps a sterile neutrino doesn't decay (as reqiured in the header), but still, it can (apparently) oscillate - becoming an electron neutrino. HOTmag (talk) 12:07, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Global deforestation runoff

What is the global deforestation runoff in km3, which is part of the 40k km3 of global runoff* in general?

• Trenberth KE, Smith L, Qian T, Dai A, Fasulo J (2007). Estimates of Global Water Budget and Its Annual Cycle Using Observational and Model Data. Journal of Hydrometeorolgy 8(4):758-769. DOI: org/10.1175/JHM600.1.

Fred weiers (talk) 07:44, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Please consult this article: "Deforestation-induced runoff changes dominated by forest-climate feedbacks". My layperson's summary: it's complicated.  --Lambiam 16:20, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Is Big Bang nucleosynthesis backwards?

The article says the universe started with electrons and protons then created neutrons through nucleosynthesis, but whataboutism those places in the current universe that are too dense for electrons to exist? Shouldn't the universe have started out with all sorts of exotic particles filling in every possible energy state that then phase changes to neutronium as soon as the density is low enough? The neutrons aren't bound together by the Strong Force and hence thermally scatter as the density drops to decay completely away over the next hour, with Lithium and Helium being the result of neutron capture, not fusion? Hcobb (talk) 14:01, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

In nucleosynthesis, including the Big Bang nucleosynthesis, neutrons and protons combine to form nuclei. In electron capture, a proton of a nucleus turns into a neutron. For example, a nickel nucleus with 28 protons may turn into a cobalt nucleus with 27 protons. In a sufficiently hot environment, nothing is stable; all reactions may go either way, as they certainly did in the first few seconds after the Big Bang.  --Lambiam 15:56, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

1934–35 North American drought

The article on the 1934–35 North American drought appears to be erroneously dated. I only noticed this because I've been writing about Georgia O'Keeffe, who became widely known for collecting bones in the desert of New Mexico from late 1929 and into the 1930s. These bones are from wild horses and cows that died due to a drought. So when I discovered that this drought was described by Wikipedia as taking place in 1934, I could see something was wrong. Other sources indicate that the media of the time widely reported the drought in the general area as beginning in 1929, not 1934. Can anyone figure out why there is this discrepancy? I did make a comment on the talk page indicating one possible reason. Viriditas (talk) 21:21, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

The infamous Dust Bowl seems to cover a wider time period. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:54, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Understood, but I'm wondering if our article on the 1934–35 North American drought should be widened in terms of the date range. Viriditas (talk) 21:59, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

The article is poorly written. If anything it should be just 1934 North American drought. The evidence is from tree rings which are incontrovertible, and the extent of the drought can be viewed in the North American Drought Atlas here. Abductive (reasoning) 10:42, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

It's very unlikely that this was the first and only drought in New Mexico – see Droughts in the United States#Events. In any case, cattle and horses in the wild die for other reasons than drought, and in a dry environment are slow to decay. The bones collected by O'Keefe could have been decades or even centuries old. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 12:49, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

It's important recognize that this drought was for nearly the whole of North America. Abductive (reasoning) 06:06, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, this 1934(–5?) drought was, but Viridas assumed that it was the same drought that was responsible for bones collected by Georgia O'Keefe in New Mexico from 1929 onwards, which is clearly unwarrented for the two reasons I have pointed out, over and above the date discrepancy. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 19:20, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

This is about Alberta, Canada, rather than New Mexico, but:

"Although the early years of the 19th century [presumably 20th century was intended] were wetter, drought returned [to the prairies] during the years of 1910, 1914, 1917, 1918 and 1919, and the drought between 1917-1926 was considered to be especially bad... The global stock market collapsed in 1929 and marked the beginning of the Great Depression. To make matters worse, a severe drought began in the prairies in 1929". [11]

Alansplodge (talk) 12:50, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

See also DROUGHTS OF 1930-34 from the US Department of the Interior. Alansplodge (talk) 12:56, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

October 28

According to the common theory, is the mechanical equilibrium a necessary sufficient condition, for not emitting gravitational waves?

By mechanical equilibrium I mean, both equilibrium of forces and equilibrium of torques (moments). HOTmag (talk) 09:00, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

A sufficient condition is that quadrupole moment (and all higher moments) of an isolated system is constant. Ruslik_Zero 20:23, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

1. Is a mechanical equilibrium a necessary condition?
2. Do you think you can give a concrete example of a body which is in a mechanical equilibrium and which emits GWs? HOTmag (talk) 20:35, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

   1: No. Take a cylindrically symmetric flywheel (i.e., solid, no spokes) and spin it on its axle. It won't emit gravitational waves, even when the rate of spin changes when you apply a torque. Its quadrupole moment is zero (or at least, the relevant components) and therefore doesn't change on rotation.

   2: Yes. Take a flywheel with two masses attached to the rim, opposite to each other, and spin it. It will emit gravitational waves. Its quadrupole moment is non-zero and changes direction during rotation. The gravitational waves will carry away some angular momentum and thereby apply a torque, but with a small motor you can compensate for that and keep the flywheel in mechanical equilibrium. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:03, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Thx. Now, let's assume we don't add the small motor, so the flywheell won't be in mechanical equilibrium, because as you say: "The gravitational waves will carry away some angular momentum and thereby apply a torque". However, since the natural source of this torque can't be any "real force" (namely: the electromagnetic force, the strong force, and the weak force), so: is it really reasonable to conclude, that the natural source of this torque is the gravitational (fictitious) "force", even when the system is isolated, i.e. not close to any other mass? It sounds a bit strange to my ears... HOTmag (talk) 11:57, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, the source of that torque is gravity, even when spacetime were flat if the flywheel hadn't been there. It's the effect of the flywheel itself on the surrounding spacetime, not depending on any disruptions from nearby objects. Just as a rotating electric or magnetic dipole looses angular momentum to electromagnetic radiation, even without an externally applied electromagnetic field. PiusImpavidus (talk) 13:46, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

So your flywheel example - but without the motor (along with any two-body system satisfying the same principle), seems to be an extremely rare case (isn't it?), in which a system being "both isolated and neutral", i.e both - not close to any other gravitational mass - and not influeced by any external real force, is not in mechanical equilibrium...

When I was taught about mechanical equilibrium in school (not long ago), my teacher never mentioned this rare option... HOTmag (talk) 15:13, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Well, what's isolated? The object isn't isolated from spacetime.

General relativity is hard. Most physics school teachers consider it hard for themselves (although they must have learned something about it) and don't want to go too deeply into it. Apart from some handwavy arguments, most students wouldn't understand it at all. PiusImpavidus (talk) 16:31, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

I've explained what I mean by "isolated": not close to any other gravitational mass.

I guess if Newton were asked about, what he thought about a body - not close to any other gravitational mass - and not influenced by any force other than the gravitational one, he would immediately determine: "The body is in mechanical equilibrium". This is a direct conclusion derived from the combination of his first two laws with his law of gravity.

So Relativity theory seems to contradict, not only the Galilean transformations and the like, but also the above combination.

Indeed, I knew General relativity was a bit different from the Newtonian theory of gravitation, but I didn't expect such a basic controversy bewteen Einstein and Newton over the necessary sufficient condition for mechanical equilibrium. Newton could define this condition as: "not close to any other gravitational mass and not influenced by any force other than the gravitational one", but Einstein would disagree. This surprises me... HOTmag (talk) 20:02, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Newton didn't know about gravitational waves, did he? In Newton's view, gravity is a force just like the pull on a rope, whilst the centrifugal force isn't real and only appears in invalid reference frames. In Newton's view, something is in mechanical equilibrium when all forces (including gravity) and all torques (including gravity) are balanced. In Newton's view, one can be isolated from gravity by being very far from the sun, as he wasn't aware of any object farther away than Saturn. And in Newton's view, bodies act on bodies at a distance.

In Einstein's view, gravity is as real as the centrifugal force and not really a force, but a deformation of spacetime. Gravity isn't directly considered when looking at mechanical equilibrium, but this is solved by having very complex coordinate transformations that can reintroduce the acceleration resulting from gravity. You cannot be isolated from gravity, as we are in a universe full of things, and the farther away, the more massive they get: we can have a star at one AU, but not an entire galaxy. We can have a galaxy at a megaparsec. And finally, bodies don't act on bodies at a distance, but act on local fields and are acted upon by such local fields. The fields provide for the propagation. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:45, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I'm aware of all these differences between both theories.

As for what I suggested as a condition for mechanical equilibrium, I was wrong when I described it as a "necessary" (and sufficient) condition, because as you say: "we are in a universe full of things", so I've just struck out the word "necessary" in my last response. Additionally: indeed, I defined an "isoloted" body as "not close to any other gravitational mass", but this definition can very easily be sharpened or idealized, by simply saying that an isolated body is a body in an ideal universe that only contains this body and not any other body. That said, Newton and Einstein wouldn't agree about the following intuitive sufficient condition for mechanical equilibrium: "being - both alone in an ideal (theoretical) universe - and also uninfluenced by any force other than the gravitational one". My point was, that Newton could agree to this sufficient condition, while Einstein would not, although this condition sounds very intuitive, if we consider both Newton's two first laws and his law of gravitation (which is of course different from Einstein's field equations). HOTmag (talk) 12:17, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

(edit conflict) A steadily rotating dumbbell in a zero-gravity environment consisting of a very thin and long bar connecting two extremely massive spheres will emit gravitational waves yet has constant linear and angular momentum. One can argue that this rotating system will actually loose angular momentum due to its rotational energy being transferred to energy dissipated by the gravitational waves. But this lack of rotational mechanical equilibrium is the result of the emission of the gravitational waves and not its cause.  --Lambiam 10:47, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Thx. Apparently, the natural source - of the torque applied on this system - can't be the gravitational (fictitious) "force", because you're referring to a "zero-gravity environment". Nor can the natural source of the torque be any other natural force (namely: the electromagnetic force, the strong force, and the weak force). Isn't this a bit bizzare? HOTmag (talk) 11:57, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Have a look at Mach's principle and Frame dragging. Zero gravity just means no nearby masses. Mach's principle hasn't been verified but there's good reason to think it or something very like it holds so you get an inertial frame when there is 'zero gravity' set by the distant stars. By the way frame dragging happens round a rotating body even if there are no gravity waves. NadVolum (talk) 18:49, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

October 29

Which ones (if any) of the following seven bodies, have both a [mechanical] equilibrium and a varying quadrupole moment?

Seven bodies.

HOTmag (talk) 07:56, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

The four objects in the middle appear to be in equilibrium and have a constant quadrupole moment. The rod in the upper right has varying quadrupole moment, but is in equilibrium (apart from the torque resulting from the emission of gravitational waves). The rod on the lower right has a varying quadrupole moment and is not in mechanical equilibrium, as its centre of mass moves in a circle. I can't be sure about the teapot. It looks like its quadrupole moment varies, its centre of mass moves, so there's a net force, and it doesn't spin on a principal axis, so there's a net torque. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:16, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Thx. By equilibrium I meant mechanical equilibrium, i e. both of forces and of torques (Sorry for not adding this from the beginning). So is your answer still valid after adding this addition? HOTmag (talk) 10:34, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I already assumed that was what you meant by mechanical equilibrium. PiusImpavidus (talk) 13:53, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Thx. HOTmag (talk) 15:45, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Aardvark cucumbers and Madagascar

in the article on aardvarks habitat and range it states that they are not found in Madagascar

the article on the aardvark cucumber states that it can be found in Madagascar

Yet. both articles make it clear that the aardvark is necessary for the cucumber to grow and thrive

So my question is, what animal assists the cucumber in madagascar where there are no aardvarks?140.147.160.225 (talk) 12:53, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

I find this interesting. I've found multiple sources for related information. The aardvark cucumber is only eaten by aardvarks (many sources state that, but surely SOMETHING will also eat it). Humans do not eat aardvark cucumbers, and therefore do not farm them. There are no aardvarks on Madagascar. A closely related animal was last noted in 1895. It is assumed extinct. The only source that claims there are aardvark cucumbers on Madagascar is Wikipedia. Every website I found that made that claim was simply a copy of the Wikipedia page. The claim on Wikipedia is unsourced, so it is most likely not true. Unless someone can find a reliable resource that is not a copy of the Wikipedia article, I suggest removing Madagascar from the aardvark cucumber article. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 13:51, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks 12.116! I have removed Madagascar from the cucumber article and left an edit summary explaining140.147.160.225 (talk) 16:46, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Because resources are very hard to find, I sent emails to a few organizations to ask for help including some nature reserves on Madagascar, a few large botanical gardens with African collections, and a few botanist instructors that I know. If we are lucky, one of them will respond. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 16:51, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Why aren't bone balls big enough that they can't leave the socket without cracking bone?

Is this kind of ball-and-socket joint a local fitness maximum ? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:25, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Isn't the question its own answer? Abductive (reasoning) 01:20, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, you're probably better off with a dislocated limb that might pop back in place, than a nasty fracture to a precise structure. In fact there's probably a name for this concept in engineering, something like redundancy (engineering). Except not that. Fault tolerance? Fail-safe? That general conceptual area. Apple's MagSafe system comes to mind.  Card Zero  (talk) 06:07, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

There is also the concept of graceful degredation^[12] (Wot? No article??) graceful degradation, which seems to have been engineered by evolution into the functioning of the brain.  --Lambiam 12:10, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

There is a long-standing redirect from graceful degradation [sic] to fault tolerance. Mike Turnbull (talk) 16:22, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Wouldn't the possibility of "overshooting the mark" and having the head become to big to move within the cavity also be relevant? --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:20, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

It's been on Wikipedia over 241 months just not a similar-sounding typo of it. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:47, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

A generic engineering term is fail-safe: a feature of a design whose purpose is to reduce harm in the event of a failure of the design. An example are pressure relief valves; gradual release of possibly noxious gases is better than a catastrophic blowup.  --Lambiam 12:32, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

The incidental Cam out feature of Phillips screwdrivers similarly reduces damage when stress exceeds a normal range. Philvoids (talk) 14:09, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

In German we have the wonderful term Sollbruchstelle ("predetermined breaking point"), describing a predetermined failure mode with (hopefully) minimal collateral damage. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:17, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

It would give you either a thin connection between the ball and the rest of the bone it belongs to, or a limited range of motion. PiusImpavidus (talk) 16:07, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Is the shoulder socket even over a full hemisphere? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:50, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Nowhere near – see the illustrations in Scapula, particularly Figure 1, and in Glenoid fossa, which is the actual 'socket'. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 23:09, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Why'd they draw a minimalist mechanical ball joint next to an anatomical one and compare them to mechanical ball joints when there's so many more accurate possible names like ball-and-wok joint or ball-and-hollow joint or ball-and-bowl joint or ball-and-depression joint or ball-and-crater joint? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:06, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Anatomists have traditionally used the 'ball and socket' terminology for a long time, perhaps because the term is well established and familiar to most people even outside of anatomy, whereas the others you mention are not in general use (I assume you just made them up). There is no implication that the socket has to be at least a (concave) hemisphere – see for example Ground glass joint#Ball-and-socket joints.

Note that the linked article mentions the condition you specified in your query title: "An enarthrosis is a special kind of spheroidal joint in which the socket covers the sphere beyond its equator", and the linked reference notes that the (human) hip joint is an example of this. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 15:32, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

How can hips sometimes pop out without any bone fractures? Is it mostly cause everything's at least slightly compressible even bone and cartilage or is it mostly abrasion from being shoved through a slightly too small hole or is it that the ball would only need help to fit if it filled the socket to the exclusion of the liquid joint lubricant? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:19, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Because, as you suggest, not just bone is involved. There are (in a healthy joint) layers of cartilage and other tissues between the bone of the ball and the wall and rim of the socket, which can be somewhat (painfully) compressed, and bone can be slightly flexible. Also, the socket is only just more than a hemisphere (and individuals will differ a little). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 19:28, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

That the ball normally maintains contact with the socket is due to the strength of the somewhat elastic joint capsule keeping them together. But the application of too large a force can distend the membranes of this joint capsule enough for the ball to dislocate (jump out of its usual seat).  --Lambiam 20:19, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

October 31

Does an accelerated body at (instantaneous) rest, emit gravitational waves?

According to LIGO, "every physical object that accelerates produces gravitational waves". But how can the GWs, emitted from the accelerated body, carry away momentum from the body being at (instantaneous) rest? HOTmag (talk) 14:30, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps because "instantaneous rest" is a mathematical abstraction, not a real-world condition that applies to a real-world accelerating body? Others more expert can doubtless address this concept better.

My impression is that you are just making up puzzles using random concepts, as you have previously been doing under this and your previous User name HOOTmag for more than ten years. I'm not intending to play anymore. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 15:39, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, but my question is serious (like all of my questions here). I really don't know how to anwser it correctly (I don't remember I ever made up puzzles using random concepts). HOTmag (talk) 16:11, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Zeno of Elea c. 490 – c. 430 BC tried "seriously" to divide time into instants. In his arrow paradox, Zeno states that for motion to occur, an object must change the position which it occupies. He gives an example of an arrow in flight. He states that at any one (durationless) instant of time, the arrow is neither moving to where it is, nor to where it is not. It cannot move to where it is not, because no time elapses for it to move there; it cannot move to where it is, because it is already there. In other words, at every instant of time there is no motion occurring. If everything is motionless at every instant, and time is entirely composed of instants, then motion is impossible. Philvoids (talk) 16:18, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Zeno's paradoxes are well known, but the mistake hidden in them has already been discovered, actually after Calculus was discovered. The way to remove Zeno's paradox is achieved by the concept of mathematical limit.

But my question has nothing to do with those old paradoxes, because as opposed to them, I can phrase my question without using any instantaneous velocity, but rather with the rigorous concept of mathermatical limit. I've only used the concept "instantaneous rest" for letting you grasp my question intuitively. If I had used the concept of mathermatical limit, I would have phrased my question otherwise, but the question would have still remained. For example I could ask: What's happening to the GWs emitted by the body, when the body's velocity approaches to zero? Does the GW emission approach to a zero radiation emitted by the body? HOTmag (talk) 16:48, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Given that the emission of a GW is continuous process, the question does not really make sense. Note that for a continuously accelerating body, the instant of zero velocity has a length of precisely zero seconds, and hence the amount of momentum transferred during this instant is also zero. But that is true for every (length zero) instant. You need to integrate over a non-zero time period if you want to see a real transfer or momentum (or energy). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:31, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Some days ago, I already referred to integration: See below, my paragraph beginning with the (green) words: "the accelerated object". HOTmag (talk) 02:17, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

The statement is simplified and not strictly true. A linearly accelerating body without rotation (or with rotational symmetry around the axis of rotation) does not emit gravitational waves — as discussed in another thread the quadrupole moment of the mass distribution needs to change. This is true for almost any real-life body or mass distribution, and this argument could be used to justify making that statement in a non-technical web page for the lay public. The instantaneous rest thing is fine, by the way and in a frame-dependent way, but not particularly relevant here. --Wrongfilter (talk) 16:50, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for this important clarification. I'm quite amazed. Previous threads mentioned the quadrupole moment of the mass distribution, but none of them mentioned what you're caliming now, that "A linearly accelerating body without rotation...does not emit gravitational waves". On the contrary, some users claimed that an acceleration was sufficient for emitting GWs, and nobody disagreed, so I thought they were correct. Now you're surprising me.

Anyway, according to your clarification, I wonder now why our article Gravitational wave claims "An isolated non-spinning solid object moving at a constant velocity will not radiate". Aren't the words "moving at a constant velocity" redundant? HOTmag (talk) 17:02, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

"A linearly accelerating body without rotation (or with rotational symmetry around the axis of rotation) does not emit gravitational waves ... This is true for almost any real-life body or mass distribution." (emphasis mine).

This made me curious. There are exceptions to this rule? Would you be willing to give some examples, please? (Asking as a member of said lay public.)

Thanks! -- Avocado (talk) 12:51, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

It's a word of caution. If I had written "all real-life bodies" somebody would have blasted me for that. If you wish you can read it as almost every. --Wrongfilter (talk) 13:06, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes, this is also what I wondered about, but I finally didn't ask you about that, because I guessed you had only wanted to use a word of caution, as you say now. So it seems you don't rule out NadVolum's reservation "a constant linear acceleration doesn't generate gravitational waves", do you? HOTmag (talk) 13:18, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Just a little extra on that - a constant linear acceleration doesn't generate gravitational waves. NadVolum (talk) 18:40, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Now you add: "constant". But if the acceleration is not constant, then my question in the header comes back... HOTmag (talk) 18:45, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

A single, accelerating body doesn't even exist: conservation of momentum says that there must be at least second body, accelerating in the opposite direction. And although a single body has no quadrupole moment, the pair of two bodies has. So the issue is avoided. PiusImpavidus (talk) 20:24, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

This thread hasn't mentioned a "single" body, and I can't see how a universe containing more than one object avoids the issue. My question is actually: how can the GWs, emitted from a given body accelerated by a jerk (i.e. by a non constant acceleration), carry momentum away from the body being at (instantaneous) rest? HOTmag (talk) 08:52, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

The question is poorly phrased and possibly based on a misunderstanding.

"But how can the GWs, emitted from the accelerated body," The GWs are produced by the body, but the body doesn't do that on its own. The GWs are emitted by the space surrounding the body and its reaction mass. The waves are, as usual, a far-field approximation. The near-field is a bit more complex. "carry away momentum from the body" Who said that? In the discussion a few topics up on spinning rods I mentioned angular momentum. "being at (instantaneous) rest" Here you make the same error as Zeno (good he was mentioned). The accelerated object is at rest for a time interval of zero, so it must emit zero waves during that time interval, as waves are a continuous phenomenon. You have to consider the emission of waves over a time interval equal to the inverse of the wave's frequency. That's rather basic.

BTW, you won't find a constant acceleration in the universe. Also, a speed of zero is physically irrelevant. You can always make the speed zero by coordinate transformation, which cannot change the physics.

Now I'm wondering, you ask questions on general relativity, which I consider academic master's level of physics, yet make such basic errors, third year secondary school. I can't squeeze seven years of physics education in an answer here; that's a pile of physics books. If you aren't making fun of us, then you started reading that pile from the wrong end. I like to assume good faith and love a good physics question, but that's why I don't always respond to your questions. PiusImpavidus (talk) 17:12, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

I like to assume good faith. Thank you, and please keep assuming good faith. Yes, I graduated secondry school not long ago, so I may make mistakes sometimes. Anyway, when I state any statement, I only rely on articles in Wikipedia. If you think my wording is wrong, don't hesitate and please tell where my mistake is, and I will thank you from the bottom of my heart.

The GWs are produced by the body, but the body doesn't do that on its own. When I wrote "GWs, emitted from the accelerated body", I used a wording used in our article Gravitational wave: "This gives the star a quadrupole moment that changes with time, and it will emit gravitational waves". Anyway, if you're trying to claim that the wording in Wikipedia is wrong and that a single body cannot emit GWs, then please don't hesitate to say that (I'm still not sure if that's the case because you haven't said this yet), and I will thank you from the bottom of my heart for removing this error - not only from Wikipedia - but mainly from me, because I've always thought that also a single body can emit GWs (provided that its quadrupole moment varies).

"carry away momentum from the body" Who said that? Again, I'm only relying on Wikipedia. Please see our article Gravitational wave: "Water waves, sound waves, and electromagnetic waves are able to carry energy, momentum, and angular momentum and by doing so they carry those away from the source. Gravitational waves perform the same function. Thus, for example, a binary system loses angular momentum as the two orbiting objects spiral towards each other – the angular momentum is radiated away by gravitational waves".

The accelerated object is at rest for a time interval of zero, so it must emit zero waves during that time interval, as waves are a continuous phenomenon. You have to consider the emission of waves over a time interval equal to the inverse of the wave's frequency. That's rather basic. AFAIK, you can always use the well known mathematical operation called integration, for "collecting (uncountably) infinitely many infinitesimals" of instants at which the accelerated system was at rest, and then you receive a non zero quantity of energy of GWs produced by the accelerated system at those instants of rest. The question is, where was the energy/momentum of those GWs carried away from? But maybe this integration is actually impossible, not only physically - because (as you say): "waves are a continuous phenomenon", but also mathematically - because the set of those infinitely many instants (at which the system producing the GWs is at rest), is always a countable set only. Am I right?

BTW, you won't find a constant acceleration in the universe. Yes, but AFAIK you can always conduct an experiment which can artificially create a constant acceleration. Additionally, AFAIK a constant acceleration is important in theoretical physics, so you can regard my question as a theoretical one.

Also, a speed of zero is physically irrelevant. You can always make the speed zero by coordinate transformation, which cannot change the physics. AFAIK, physics does consider a speed of zero, for many purposes, e.g for deciding whether there is some momentum, and whether there is some kinetic energy, and the like. Additioanlly the speed of zero is important for establishing many relativistic concpets, e.g. proper frame, proper reference frame, proper length - being the longest length a given body can have, proper time - being the shortest life-time a given body can have, rest mass - being the smallest mass a given body can have (for those physicists who make a distinction between a rest mass and a relativistic mass), and likewise. HOTmag (talk) 19:03, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

The multiverse of science

Superhero fiction loves the concept of a "multiverse", that is, infinite universes that exist somewhere and that completely similar to the main universe, except for some details. It can be something big (as in, all heroes are villains instead, something turned the world into a dystopia or a post-apocalyptic wasteland) or something minor (as in, the radiactive spider does not bite Peter Parker but someone else), but in the grand scheme of things the history of the Solar System, Earth, life on Earth and human history are all basically completely the same. Needless to say, that's just a narrative device, one that has led to some awesome stories (and other so-so ones), but no more than that.

But lately I have noticed in actual science publications people who talk about the multiverse, in the real world. And we do have an article about that, Multiverse. Before breaking my head trying to understand the fine details, just a quick question: would the real multiverse be, at least in principle, similar to the multiverse as seen in fiction, or is it a completely different idea that got distorted? And if there are parallel universes, where would they physically be? I dismiss such a question with fiction because of the willing suspension of disbelief, but in science you can't get away that easily... Cambalachero (talk) 18:40, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Try and wrap your mind round things like Elitzur–Vaidman bomb tester and if you really can explain it all well I'll be glad to listen! :-) NadVolum (talk) 19:06, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

In Multiverse § Types you can see different – sometimes very different – meanings of this term. Authors of pop-science articles who bandy the term accordingly do not all use the term with the same meaning. All of it is purely speculative and in most versions has the problem that the theory is unfalsifiable because it makes no testable predictions that differ from current theory, and is therefore generally deemed to fall outside the scope of science proper.  --Lambiam 20:04, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

It is among the Interpretations of quantum mechanics#Influential_interpretations.  Card Zero  (talk) 23:33, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

If there was only one universe, where would it physically be? For multiple universes, we can use the same answer. If you own a car, where do you keep it? It's a deep question, but it's not an obstacle to the concept of a person owning two or three cars.  Card Zero  (talk) 23:47, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

So the multiverse would be like a multi-car garage? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:56, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

OK, if you have more than one parking spot it raises the question "how does one parking spot relate to the next, in physical space?", and that's a reasonable question if you know the first parking spot's location in physical space. But when the parking spots are universes, the answer might be "they don't", because nobody ever said the first parking spot was located anywhere anyway.  Card Zero  (talk) 00:08, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes. It would be in some other dimension beyond mere physicality. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:23, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

They are all in your mind.  --Lambiam 07:06, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

I recall one professor contradicting the famous "Cogito ergo sum / I think, therefore I am" as "Maybe he only thinks that he thinks." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:04, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

As a few people have said, "The problem with thinking about the universe is that there's nothing to compare it to". That's based on the assumption that universe = "everything that can possibly exist, anywhere". And yet, the human mind can comprehend the concept of an infinite number of different universes, each containing everything that can possibly exist, anywhere. It's no more difficult to work with such an idea than to make great use of the square root of -1. But is it actually true? I'm glad you asked ... -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 17:29, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Now imagine a (strongly) inaccessible cardinality of universes.  --Lambiam 20:46, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

I reckon the multiverse concept was inspired by the failure of the universe that we know to contain everything that can possibly exist. This assumes it is bounded and doesn't contain, for instance, versions of itself at all other ages, and versions of itself where the laws of physics are different such that life is impossible. Then the other universes are the other possibilities. They're often synonymous with moments of time, in which case we are constantly moving through universes (or perhaps "featuring in a causally related series of moments" rather than moving - same difference). The parallel universes are moments of time that we don't go to, or in many cases couldn't possibly go to. On the other hand, especially in fiction, the term more often means a causally related series of moments, a timeline or "environment", where subsequent moments are constantly branching and diverging but share a common history.  Card Zero  (talk) 21:44, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Is there a common term indicating that the current value of every derivative (of any order) of the position over time is zero?

That is, the current velocity iz zero, and so is the currect acceleartion, and so is the current jerk, and so forth...

I thought about "static" as a sufficient condition, but I'm not sure, so I'm also asking: Should every "static" body be considered to satisfy the property mentioned in the header? HOTmag (talk) 21:56, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Something that doesn't move at all is described as a fixed point or fixed object. This usually means that the object won't move even if a force is applied to it. --Amble (talk) 23:34, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Having all time derivatives zero at a particular instant is not the same as having constant position. The standard example is $e^{-{\frac {1}{t^{2}}}}$, but there are lots of other possibilities.

This is important to know when formulating differential topology, as it enables finding bump functions and partitions of unity in the smooth ($C^{\infty }$) category. --Trovatore (talk) 05:31, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

A term used by mathematicians for the function giving such a position as a function of time is "flat function".  --Lambiam 07:03, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

So my original question can be phrased as follows: Is there a common adjective, describing an object, and indicating that the object's location with respect to time is a flat function? Additionally, can the body's adjective "static" be a sufficient condition, for the above location to be a flat function? HOTmag (talk) 08:28, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Extended content

1. immovable 2. immoveable 3. fixed 4. immotile 5. unmovable 6. fast 7. nonmotile 8. stiff 9. firm 10. stabile 11. amovable 12. unmoveable 13. static 14. immoble 15. moveless 16. irremovable 17. rooted 18. stationary 19. nonmobile 20. standing 21. dead 22. nonmoving 23. rigid 24. motionless 25. unbudgeable 26. inamovable 27. unimmobilized 28. unshiftable 29. nonimmobilized 30. unmoving 31. staid 32. immoved 33. nonmutable 34. nonchangeable 35. undeposable 36. untransmutable 37. unrelocatable 38. nonremovable 39. inflexible 40. untranslocatable 41. unfluid 42. nonchanging 43. nonrotatable 44. non-mobile 45. unmigratable 46. unmobilized 47. unstationary 48. non-stationary 49. nonflexible 50. incommutable 51. nonmodifiable 52. nonrelocatable 53. unresizable 54. unfixed 55. unmodifiable 56. unchangeable 57. untransformable 58. untransportable 59. unadjustable 60. intransmutable 61. unflexible 62. nontransportable 63. sedentary 64. invariable 65. nonmigratable 66. nonvariable 67. non-animate 68. noncommutable 69. nondisplacable 70. nondisplaceable 71. immalleable 72. unvariable 73. unmechanizable 74. inanimate 75. unlocomotive 76. confined 77. unmanipulatable 78. nonadjustable 79. undisplaceable 80. uninclinable 81. nondetachable 82. unalterable 83. undislodgeable 84. intransformable 85. unmutable 86. inanimated 87. restagnant 88. nonstationary 89. torpid 90. semistationary 91. unfluidizable 92. unfixable 93. unmaneuverable 94. nonportable 95. unbending 96. nonrotative

Philvoids (talk) 17:16, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

You need a preferential reference frame to get zero velocity, so the property is not intrinsic but observer-dependent. Have objects with this property been the subject of studies in theoretical physics? If not (and I can't think of a reason why they should be of interest to physicists), it is very unlikely that there is a term of art for the property.  --Lambiam 20:00, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Time crystal? 176.2.70.177 (talk) 18:03, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

November 1

Midnight sun in Norway

Directives for military officers and military commanders in the event of an armed attack on Norway has a completely uncited section discussing an alleged event from 1968 on the Russo-Norwegian border:

On the evening of 7 June, the garrison heard the noise of powerful engines coming from the manoeuvres...Actual observations were not possible over the border in the dark...At daybreak the impressive numbers of the Soviet forces staged along the entire border became visible.

Google Maps says that the southernmost point of the border is about 69°N, and based on Midnight sun, it looks like anywhere north of 67°13'N experiences midnight sun by the end of May. Consequently, this means that all points on the Russo-Norwegian border experience midnight sun on 7-8 June, so the whole scenario is impossible. Am I understanding rightly, or have I missed something? This isn't some recent vandalism; it's present in the first version of the page history, apparently translated from the corresponding article in the Norwegian Bokmal Wikipedia. Nyttend (talk) 18:59, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

The article on the Norwegian bokmål Wikipedia ascribes the difficulty in observing the cause of the hubbub to dårlig vær, bad weather. In the original version on the Norwegian bokmål Wikipedia, the difficulty is said to have been, specifically fog. BTW, in this original bokmål version the alleged incident took place on 7 June 1967. Half a year later, "1967" was changed to "1968" by a user whose only contribution was this change.  --Lambiam 20:33, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

User:Lambiam, there's also a no:Sovjets demonstrasjon av militær styrke ved den norsk-russiske grensen i 1968, with several sources. Do the sources confirm the year, or is 1968 an error? Maybe Theohein was just fixing a typo. Nyttend (talk) 21:25, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

The sources confirm June 1968 but appear to name 6 June 1968 as the date when Norwegian soldiers stationed along the border with the Soviet Union became alarmed by a sudden advance of Soviet tanks and heavily armed soldiers, stopping only within metres of the border. There is no mention of any difficulties in observing this. Apparently, the information has been kept classified for 40 years.  --Lambiam 07:00, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

November 2

Is there a name for 0.001 miles?

I need to work on a software that works in units of one one-thousandth of a mile internally. Is there a name for such a unit? --193.83.24.42 (talk) 00:35, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

American silliness? HiLo48 (talk) 00:45, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

As opposed to French silliness, such as the met-ray. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:09, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

The Roman mile was by definition a thousand paces (milia passuum). catslash (talk) 01:24, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Actually, that's 1000 double steps, a bit under 1500m. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:40, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

The obvious millimile gets a little use. (The author there can't redefine span (unit) so easily though.) I also found it in a more modern book about chemistry, where it seems to be part of a quiz designed to test the reader's understanding of units: Which length is longer, a millimile or a decameter? but archive.org has stopped showing snippet views of in-copyright books. Millimole tends to pollute search results, which is perhaps why a chemist would be inspired to invoke millimiles.  Card Zero  (talk) 01:46, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

See pace (unit). When I worked as a surveyor, we often used this informal unit and with practice it became 99% accurate, good enough for most purposes. Shantavira|^{feed me} 09:21, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

There is an existing more accurate unit, used by the railways, known as the "link". Your unit is 8 links. The link is divided decimally and contains 7.92 inches. Your unit is therefore (7.92 x 8) = 63.36 inches. Before metrication, Ordnance Survey maps were scaled at 1 inch to a mile. The scale was therefore 1/63 360. 2A00:23D0:FFC:3901:90DF:CC65:72B0:11FF (talk) 14:51, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Can I determine distance from size of a photographed object

If a photograph contains an object of known real size, can I use that to determine how far it was from the camera or other device that took the picture? Also, would this question fit better here or on the math reference desk? Primal Groudon (talk) 16:18, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

For one thing, you would have to know the type of lens. A wide-angle or fisheye lens makes things look farther away than they actually are. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:55, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Even with a pinhole camera you couldn't, unless you know the distance inside the camera between the pinhole and the photographic plate or film. Define four variables:

• h_ext is the real size of the object;
• d_ext is the distance between the pinhole and the object;
• h_int is the size of the object's image;
• d_int is the distance between the pinhole and the photographic plate or film.

Then h_ext : d_ext = h_int : d_int.

If you have the values of three of these variables, you can determine that of the fourth. With simple fixed lenses, this also gives a reasonable estimate.

To determine the value of d_int, you don't have to look inside the camera. Just take a picture of an object of known size at a known distance and measure h_int. You can now calculate d_int.  --Lambiam 20:16, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Empirical calibration is surely the best approach, but if your camera has a zoom, then you will need to ensure the same level of zoom is used for the measurement and the calibration. You can do this by checking the 35 mm-equivalent focal length in the exif meta-data in the jpeg files. catslash (talk) 23:49, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Here is a scenario, if you have an uncropped picture of the White House and you know the Camera Model and the Fixed Len used. You can buy the Camera and Len and take the same Picture at vairous distance of the White House until the your picture matches up to the target Picture. Then you can estimate the distance. 2001:8003:429D:4100:5CCA:727C:C447:3877 (talk) 22:07, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

There are two factors that change the size of an object in a photo when you fix the lens and zoom. One is the distance to the object. The other is the scaling of the photo itself. If I print a photo as 4x6 it will be much smaller than the same photo printed on 8x10. To measure distance, you really need another photo with known distance from the same camera with same lens and same zoom so you can measure the width of an object of known size on the size of the photo you printed. Then, you know the scaling factor to work out the distance to an object in another photo. Another option is to have two (or more) objects of known size at different distances where you know the distances between them. When in the same photo, you can use the sizes of the objects and the known distance between them to estimate the distance to the camera. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 18:26, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Projective Geometry can help if you know the length of something in a picture and the shape of something, e.g. a square on the ground. NadVolum (talk) 18:47, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Magenta vs. purple

How come mixing blue and red with equal gets magenta in modern color theory but a bluer purple (more violet-like) in RYB color theory?? Georgia guy (talk) 16:36, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

No colour theory is perfect, but, more importantly, it is ill-defined what it means to "mix" colours. Different physical procedures will also give different outcomes.  --Lambiam 20:20, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

it depends! Red in RYB is something "not (subtracting) blue" and blue is somewhat "not (subtracting) red". So the red takes the role of the blue in the other system and vice versa. If you constructed a special "blue pigment" with some green in it and a special red pigment with some orange in it, you would mix either the pigments and have a tone between magenta and purple or you would mix the reflected light from both pigments, and have a more bright version of exactly the same tone. I don't know if you can make the brightness the same too. So it doesn't have to be a different colour, but that only works with purple because of the complementarity. Generally the colours in both systems are very differently mixed. 176.2.70.177 (talk) 20:48, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

November 6

Pornography addiction in animals

Has any scientific research ever been conducted showing that non-human animals are capable of addiction to pornographic imagery, in the same or similar manner as mice have been shown to be capable of addiction to cocaine, in that they will prefer cocaine over food and refuse food? 104.171.53.110 (talk) 23:44, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure there is unambiguous evidence that mere imagery can elicit sexual arousal in any non-human animal species.  --Lambiam 08:01, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

"Unambiguous evidence" sounds like the challenge. We do have an article about panda pornography if we're willing to weaken the standard. And rhesus like to look at photos of certain body-parts of the opposite sex of their species (see Animal sexual behaviour#Others for ref). I assume the male researchers involved in that study made plenty of "look at this picture of macaque!" jokes. DMacks (talk) 08:44, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Somewhere in one of our journals is a study on turkeys. Male turkeys get excited and attempt to mate with anything that makes them think it is female. The researchers began with a wooden female turkey and eventually ended up with a wooden female turkey head on a stick and the males still attempted to mate with it. If it is of interest, I can see if it is still in our collection and get a better reference. It isn't a photo of a turkey, but it is still an artificial substitute for a live turkey. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 18:26, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

They just gobble, gobble, gobble it up. Clarityfiend (talk) 01:06, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Anyone wanna help me develop a RealHen? DMacks (talk) 04:46, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

November 8

Street lights, rain drops and windows

A few nights ago it was pouring down with rain. I looked out a window to take a look, and I noticed that really beautiful patterns of light appeared as I put my eyes right in front of rain drops that were in front of a street light. The rain drops had interesting 'arms' surrounding them, but the most important part I noticed was that there were so many black lines covering the entirety of the drops.

I was able to take a picture of them with my phone, but unfortunately most of the the lines do not appear in the photos. You can see some on the sides but most of them are missing.

What caused these lines to appear?

―Panamitsu (talk) 05:08, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

October 25

Question with missing antecedent

I noticed an oddity at Talk:Parade (magazine)#Marriage. An IP user asked (with no antecedent anywhere, and a question mark missing): "Did she marry Leonardo DiCaprio". This appears to be a question placed on the wrong page. Yet even though I have no idea who the writer was referring to by "she", the answer must be "no", since Leonardo DiCaprio has never been married. Is there some kind of linguistic term for this phenomenon -- a question which can be answered despite a missing antecedent? --Metropolitan90 (talk) 01:33, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Asking the original poster could be a challenge. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:46, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

You only think it's answerable because you felt your understanding/definition of what was meant by "Leonardo DiCaprio" was solid enough to answer. My point is simply that there's not necessarily a defined amount of antecedental knowledge required to answer many questions. It's not a yes/no situation where you either have it or you don't. Matt Deres (talk) 16:02, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I think that's just syllogism: if no woman has been married to Leonardo DiCaprio, then "she" – a specific, albeit unidentified, woman – has not been married to Leonardo DiCaprio. --Theurgist (talk) 21:32, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

The OP is not asking why we can answer this specific question, but about a name for a kind of question, like there is the term "rhetorical question". An unanswerable question may be called a "conundrum". A question that is its own answer could be called an "autological question". Most questions with an unresolved referent need resolution before they can be answered, even granted sufficient knowledge about all other names and terms. Some can be answered, in spite of dangling references, in the same way that we can give the value of $x-x$ while not knowing the value of $x.$  --Lambiam 18:00, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Maximum synonyms

What is an English word with an unusually large number of synonyms? If I ask search engines this question, they just list synonyms for "unusually", "large", or "number of".  Card Zero  (talk) 22:03, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Supposedly the word "set" has a very large number of meanings, and its entry takes up a lot of space in comprehensive dictionaries, so it might also come with a large number of synonyms (not guaranteed)... 22:28, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I encountered that, but that's the answer to the opposite question (word with the most meanings). What I'm looking for is a meaning with (possibly) the most words. Eskimo words for snow mentions "WATER".  Card Zero  (talk) 22:56, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I'd imagine that vague words of approbation or disapprobation, such as good and bad, would have a large number of synonyms. (A Google search for bad synonyms, for example, turns up a link—reading "BAD Synonyms: 1101 Similar and Opposite Words"—to Merriam-Webster's thesaurus page.) Deor (talk) 00:14, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Oxford English Dictionary#Entries and relative size notes that set has been overtaken successively by make, good and run; the latter having 645 senses (meanings) distinguished. I have also heard jack mentioned as a word with many different meanings. -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 19:22, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

I am all things to all people. That is my joy and my tragedy. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:38, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Like Caesar's wife? DuncanHill (talk) 21:56, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Exactly. I place great store in always being seen to be beyond reproach. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:39, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Having done zero research into this question, I suspect that words with the highest number of synonyms (as opposed to separate meanings) are those where their communication is burdened by a certain amount of social sensitivity: words like die, vagina, cannabis, etc. Folly Mox (talk) 19:53, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

They certainly develop a large subset of those synonyms known as euphemisms. -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 21:30, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

• WordNet is a computer-readable dictionary with "synsets", sets of synonymous words, and the largest synset in the database is... buttocks, ass, .... After that is dohickey, thingummy, .... For verbs, its's to love and then to botch and to bawl out. If I'm reading this correctly, it has 28 words for buttocks and 24 words for love. Those numbers do seem a little low to me, so it might not be including multi-word phrases or some very slangy terms. Smurrayinchester 13:42, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

  I had thought of WordNet and investigated this myself. Somewhere along the way I read that the largest synset is "concrete", as in "real" or "substantial". But I didn't see a list of the synonyms, and began to doubt if "synset" really means a set of synonymous words. Perhaps it's more like a set of related concepts?  Card Zero  (talk) 17:40, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

  I came across that too. The concrete group seems to refer to a larger collection of synsets - a slightly foggier group of polysemys (so taking into account that being synonymous is not a transitive property. "run" means "manage" and "sprint", but "manage" doesn't mean "sprint"). Smurrayinchester 09:20, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

October 26

Spoken Nynorsk

Quoting Speech from the throne#Norway:

Afterwards, the monarch and members take their seats and the Report on the State of the Realm, an account of the government achievement of the past year, is read (traditionally in Nynorsk), customarily by the youngest member of the government present.

I understand that the text could be written in Nynorsk rather than Bokmål, but since both of them are related to orthography rather than pronunciation, how can we say that a speech is read in either standard? Nyttend (talk) 05:58, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

There was the case of the "abominable snowman", a TV weathercaster in the 1960s who insisted on pronouncing the word for "snow" with what many Norwegian viewers interpreted as an ultra-Danish pronunciation, causing great controversy... AnonMoos (talk) 11:08, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Nynorsk tends to have different words for a lot of concepts, and where they are related, there would be different vowels and such, which usually aren't unstressed. You can hear Jon Fosse reading from his book in this video, which I assume is Haugesund dialect. [13] I think there are a lot more fricatives and affricates than in spoken Urban East Norwegian. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:07, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

I could provide samples of later traditions of Genesis in Nynorsk and Bokmål for comparison. The situation might be similar to the differences between RP British and formal Scots, or so. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:26, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Nynorsk
1 I opphavet skapte Gud himmelen og jorda. 
2 Jorda var aud og tom, mørker låg over djupet, og Guds ande svevde over vatnet. 
3 Då sa Gud: «Det skal bli lys!» Og det vart lys. 
4 Gud såg at lyset var godt, og Gud skilde lyset frå mørkret. 
5 Gud kalla lyset dag, og mørkret kalla han natt. Og det vart kveld, og det vart morgon, første dagen.

Bokmål
1 I begynnelsen skapte Gud himmelen og jorden. 
2 Jorden var øde og tom, mørke lå over dypet, og Guds ånd svevde over vannet. 
3 Da sa Gud: «Det skal bli lys!» Og det ble lys. 
4 Gud så at lyset var godt, og Gud skilte lyset fra mørket. 
5 Gud kalte lyset dag, og mørket kalte han natt. Og det ble kveld, og det ble morgen, første dag.

Wow, I had no idea there were significant differences with anything aside from orthography. But then, my experience of Norwegian is limited to its use on stamps (even with "Noreg" versus "Norge", I figured they were pronounced the same), and I'd never compared the two or realised that there were vocabulary differences. Wakuran, you say "later traditions of Genesis" — do you mean that these are recent translations? I don't need to know either version of the language to recognise that it's the first chapter of the book. Nyttend (talk) 06:48, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

I meant to write "translations". The Bible is a text that's been translated into almost every known written language. They are apparently recent translations into the two Norwegian varieties. The "orthography" explanation is mostly to clarify that there aren't only two different dialects of Norwegian. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:33, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

@Nyttend: There are, in fact, essentially no orthographical differences between Bokmål and Nynorsk; essentially all words that are pronounced the same in both are also written identically in both. This has been the case since the 1917 reform of Bokmål, when Bokmål essentially adopted the orthography of Nynorsk. For instance, before the 1917 reform, [ˈmɛ̀nː] "men" was written menn in Nynorsk but mænd in Bokmål; since 1917, the spelling is menn in both. (Compare Danish mænd, Swedish män, Faroese and Icelandic menn, normalised Old Norse menn.) The differences between Bokmål and Nynorsk are overwhelmingly to do with differently pronounced inflexional morphology and differently pronounced forms of the same etymon, as well as some differences in vocabulary (plus a little syntax), while there is only a handful of mandatory orthographical differences. (Off the top of my head I can only think of skjære/skjere, -a; skåret/skore; skjær/skjer & skjær; bære/bere, -a; båret/bore; være/vere, -a & vêre, -a; vær/vêr & vær; lær/lêr; gjev/gjæv; dråpe/drope; såle/sole; tåle/tole, -a; måke/moke, -a; sprukket/sprokke; strukket/strokke; rukket/rokke; sluppet/sloppe; lege/lækje, -a.) A handful of words are written the same in Bokmål and Nynorsk but pronounced differently, e.g. meg "me", Bokmål [ˈmæ̀ɪ], Nynorsk [ˈmèːɡ].

Norge is pronounced [ˈnɔ̂rɡə] in "Urban East Norwegian", while Noreg is pronounced [ˈnôːreːɡ]. 2001:4646:2494:0:5417:D8C:2A29:308F (talk) 12:02, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Probably Arab

What does this
عايزة أسئلة دراسات للصف الاول الاعدادي الوحدة الاولى
mean?

Found in Talk:Perplexity AI / 2nd topic.

Please translate it there.

Ping welcome, Steue (talk) 11:29, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Google says it means "I want social studies questions for the first year of middle school, the first unit" ColinFine (talk) 18:24, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Lettered list

This is part of a note section in a WP article. An artist used the boy (Donald) as a model on several occasions. Is this list grammatically correct? Such as capitalization and completeness. I know the word "in" is usually placed before the years. But my main concern is the structure of the list. Thanks.
Donald's highlights follow: a. graduated from Horace Greeley School, 1941. b. took part in Operation Overlord (ADSEC unit). Landed on June 21, 1944. c. lettered in three sports at Rider College, 1946–48. d. worked as a sportswriter for The Daily Item of Port Chester, N.Y., 1948–49. e. worked as an associate editor for Progressive Grocer, 1956–61. f. attended the 65th anniversary ceremonies of the Normandy landings in France, 2009. JimPercy (talk) 14:29, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong with the structure (consistent) and grammar (correct, in this context) of the list. My personal choice might have been to parenthesise the lc item letters (i.e. '(a)' not 'a.') and either begin each entry with a capital letter, or end each item with a semicolon, but that would depend on the styles present elsewhere in the article. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists, Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Bulleted and numbered lists and WP:MoS#Colons may be of help, as might Help:Footnotes.

Of course, all this goes out of the window if the text is a quote from a source, in which case it should be reproduced as it appears in that source. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 16:56, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. It's all my own wording. I also enclosed a couple "hidden texts" to back up the statements. So, another way would be using (a) (b) (c) instead of (a. b. c.). Still another way would be using semicolons instead of the closing periods. I thought it would look better starting every sentence with a capital letter. But the sentences are not complete (w/o an "He"). I suppose the sentences don't have to be complete in list format. So, I can capitalize the words "Graduated," "Lettered," "Worked," etc. OTOH. That might be a good reason to go the semicolon route (instead of capitalizing the first letter of incomplete sentences). JimPercy (talk) 18:08, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Why the a.b.c. tags at all? He graduated from Horace Greeley School in 1941. He took part in Operation Overlord (ADSEC unit), which landed on June 21, 1944. He lettered in three sports at Rider College, 1946–48. He worked as a sportswriter for The Daily Item of Port Chester, N.Y., in 1948–49. He worked as an associate editor for Progressive Grocer in 1956–61. He attended the 65th anniversary ceremonies of the Normandy landings in France in 2009. —Tamfang (talk) 20:53, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

October 27

A or an before abbreviations?

It's usually clear when to say a or an: a NASA, an FBI, a UK, an EU. (eg, 'an' before a vowel sound, 'a' before a consonant sound) But the following trip me up: is it an FAC or a FAC (as some people read 'a featured article candidate', a/an HGV (heavy goods vehicle) and LGV (large goods vehicle), a/an NI (National Insurance) number, a/an MP (member of parliament), and especially, a/an SNES, which even discusses it within the article. It doesn't really matter in informal writing but it really matters when you have to write in a formal way. Is there anyway to fix this problem? JuniperChill (talk) 13:31, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Short answer to the general case is "no", although I'm sure some publisher style guides recommend one practice (acronym, initialism, read as full expansion) over others. It doesn't seem like we do, according to MOS:ACRO. For article development, I suppose the answer as usual is "follow the sources".

This was actually discussed just a few months back at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Abbreviations § "a" or "an" (Summer 2024), with no conclusion. Folly Mox (talk) 13:50, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Also at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Abbreviations/Archive 4 § "a RFC" vs "an RFC" (2012 & 2013). Folly Mox (talk) 13:58, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm thinking people who type 'a RfC' means that they read it as 'a request for comment'. I tend to say 'an RfC' because I do say it letter by letter (like a BBC). However, I tend to write 'a LU', because I say it as 'a London Underground...'. But with a/an before HGV, is confusing as it has to do with the Brits on how to say the letter H. Its mixed, as some say /hei-ch/ rather than /ei-ch/. For example, this gov.uk website says both 'a HGV' and 'an HGV' in the same page. And a yt channel called Luke C in a HGV. JuniperChill (talk) 16:12, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

It's interesting to see the evolution of how people pronounce initialisms as terms become more commonplace: few people nowadays would read LOL as "laughing out loud" rather than /ell oh ell/ or even /la:l/; I've also heard BTW, WTF, TBH, JMO, and TL;DR pronounced as initialisms in spoken conversation. OTOH, some initialisms tend still to be read in expanded form: I've yet to hear anyone say /en gee ell/ for NGL instead of "not gonna lie", or /tee aye ell/ for TIL rather than "today I learned".

Of course, some acronyms become so accepted as regular words that pronouncing them otherwise would just confuse the listener: if I heard someone say /are ey dee ey are/ for radar or /ell ey ess ee are/ for laser, I'd assume they were spelling it out because their dog associates it with treats or something. Folly Mox (talk) 16:47, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I assume JMO is "just my opinion"? Never encountered it before. The initialisms containing W gain syllables compared to the things they're supposed to abbreviate, so this is a bizarre development.  Card Zero  (talk) 08:52, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Assumption correct; appears undocumented both here and at wikt:. Folly Mox (talk) 17:28, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

In my opinion it depends on how the abbreviation is pronounced, which may be speaker-dependent. If people say /əˈspɒf/, you write "a SPOF". If they say /ənˈɛs.piː.oʊˌɛf/, you write "an SPOF".  --Lambiam 17:15, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

But then, some people completely avoid the use of "an". For them, it's a apple, a orange, a ectoplasm, a irritation, and a utterly stupid way of talking. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 17:56, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

"The law is a ass" occurs in the mid-19th-century in Dickens, but you're right about the recent rise of this... AnonMoos (talk) 18:06, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

This sounds related to the phenomenon of modern Chinese speakers eschewing the prescribed system of Chinese classifiers (measure words) for the generic 個; ge in all cases. Folly Mox (talk) 17:32, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

It's dialectical. There are different ways of avoiding the clash between vowels. Some use schwa for a but begin apple with a glottal stop, others instead pronounce a as a diphthong /ei/. Either way, you get a consonant-like transition between the article and the noun. — kwami (talk) 23:03, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

October 28

What is a better word here?

In the sentence “Chicken has de facto become its own genre of food [which refers to the diversity of chicken-centered food items],” what is a more apt word in place of “genre?” Primal Groudon (talk) 20:43, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

First, what's new about this? Second, various synonyms work: class, category, type, etc. EO has another synonym or two.[14] But while it seems valid, "genre" is used more in connection with works of art. Unless someone thinks fried chicken is a work of art! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:18, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

BB, you must not be from the Southern U.S. where fried chicken is indeed an art form. --136.56.165.118 (talk) 05:41, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

• Culinary category
• Cuisine
• Gastronomy

I feel less comfortable with the second two, I recommend the first. But perhaps say "a culinary category in its own right" rather than "its own culinary category", which just makes me think of chickens being fed to other chickens.  Card Zero  (talk) 08:57, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Any Current Wikipedia Featured articles from the brilliant Freshing Prose Days

Hi. I was wondering if there are any Current Wikipedia Featured articles from the Refreshing brilliant prose days back in the early 2000s. Please let me know. Thank You. 2605:B100:142:F42C:9CC9:8B9D:6417:A145 (talk) 21:39, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Byzantine Empire has been listed continually since 2001, when it was still just "brilliant prose", and was subsequently confirmed in 2004 (as "refreshing brilliant prose"), and again in 2007 and 2012. But it's currently under review and might well be delisted. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:44, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Now what is the oldest Wikipedia Featured Article Not Currently At Review. 50.100.44.234 (talk) 21:46, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

October 29

Oldest Featured article not currently at Review

Hi. I was wondering what the oldest Current Featured article not currently at review is. Let me know. Thank You. 50.100.44.234 (talk) 00:07, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Japanese language question

I took this picture of a packet of Japanese seaweed snacks. It has Japanese writing on it. What does it say? JIP | Talk 01:22, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Sesame oil flavored Korean style. Domestically produced seaweed is lightly fried in delicious vegetable oil and seasoned Korean style with sesame oil and salt. Andre🚐 01:24, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! JIP | Talk 01:45, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Seems to be a pretty standard typeface, clear characters and prosaic writing. I think a smartphone could do a passable photo translation. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:45, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Three English questions

1. How common is ⟨er⟩ spelling (meter, liter, center) in Canadian and Australian English?
2. Are there any polysyllabic words that begin with checked vowels in English?
3. Do English speakers refer to measurements like 5.5 kg as "five and half kilograms" in daily conversation?

--40bus (talk) 15:25, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Question 1

On 1: We generally abhor -er endings Down Under, but as spellcheck continues its inexorable rise to world domination and Americanisms proliferate, such atrocities are finding their way more and more into written communications. Particularly from those who do not know the first thing about the language they (ab)use, such as journalists and users of "social" media. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:54, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Just imagine if they develop a sister app for spellcheck, called "factcheck", which will ding anything that its AI considers to be factually incorrect.

When I see spellings like "metre" or "theatre", I'm inclined to pronounce them as "met-ray" and "thea-tray". :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:33, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Re 1: My US spellchecker rejects dioptre, fibre, goitre, lustre, mitre, nitre, philtre, reconnoitre, saltpetre, sceptre, sepulchre, sombre, spectre, titre, but accepts cadre, calibre, chancre, euchre, fiacre, genre, louvre, lucre, macabre, manoeuvre, massacre, mediocre, nacre, ochre, oeuvre, sabre, theatre, timbre, so these last may be acceptable in some contexts. In Australian English, metre is a unit of measurement with meter in other contexts, such as voltmeter, gasometer. Center appears in the phrase one per-center. My Macquarie dictionary grudgingly accepts diopter. Luster could be what Aussies call a "perv". Doug butler (talk) 21:40, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

I would imagine if we only had UK and US spellcheckers. What would happen to users of CA, AU and NZ and others? I would presume they would use UK English/spellchecker then? JuniperChill (talk) 13:06, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Are there any differences between UK and NZ spellings? User:Nil Einne, any ideas? Canadian...well, that would be awkward. Here in Australia, we're basically identical to UK spelling, with the significant exception of politics: the Commonwealth government and most state/territory governments are currently controlled by the Australian Labor Party, even though organisations like the CFMEU are organised labour. So if we didn't have an Australian spellchecker, we'd just have to add "Labor" to the UK dictionary, and we'd be able to function rather well. As Jack notes, American influence is significant; at my workplace, nobody's ever bothered to change the office computers to prefer Australian English, so words like "licence" and "metre" get the little red underlines whenever we type them, just like on the laptop I'm using to type this; I bought it when living in the US, and it might not have come with an Australian option. Nyttend (talk) 19:47, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

My guess is that despite being close to Australia, NZ English is closer to British English than Australian English. So effectively British English, but with a small difference. Like NZ doesn't use fairy floss (AU term for candy floss). Same can be said for Ireland (except that their police force is called 'Gardaí'). JuniperChill (talk) 19:50, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

That was indeed the case, back in the day. (I am Canadian). In the early days, word processors like Word Perfect only had the option of American spellings or UK spellings and we typically went with the UK one. That didn't work perfectly, but was more often the correct one, in part because UK spellings are almost always recognized as an acceptable variant here. American abominations like /thru/ and /tonite/ were generally not acceptable in formal prose in Canada, so it was better to have those identified as potential errors. Matt Deres (talk) 20:11, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Question 2

Re. 2: Loads of words: instance, example, enrich, episode, any, union, active, alloy (the stress being on the first syllable), answer (in American accent, i.e. with the first vowel pronounced like that of "at"), and likewise. I still wonder if there are words (not necessarily polysyllabic) that begin with the vowel of put.

Don't know what a "checked vowel" is, and can't think of any examples of a word being "unnecessarily polysyllabic", nor was I aware that the scouse accent was limited to the area around Liverpool, but in northern English many words begin with the vowel of "put". 2A00:23D0:7CC:A601:BC7E:CC68:E368:708 (talk) 11:54, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Don't know what a "checked vowel" is. See checked vowel.

can't think of any examples of a word being "unnecessarily polysyllabic". The OP asked about "polysyllabic words", so I wondered if there were words, whether polysyllabic or not (that's what I meant by "not necessarily polysyllabic") that began with the vowel of put.

nor was I aware that the scouse accent was limited to the area around Liverpool, but in northern English many words begin with the vowel of "put". Yes, that's probably because you pronounce cud like could, so you probably begin the word under with the vowel of could. But what I wondered about was about words as pronounced by most English speakers (including those in Southern England), who actually do have the cud-could split. HOTmag (talk) 12:49, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

In NA-English, after some consideration the only word I've been able to think of that begins with the vowel of "put" is oops. (Incidentally, I'm reading unnecessarily polysyllabic as "not necessarily polysyllabic", which makes sense.) Folly Mox (talk) 12:53, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Correct, that's what I meant, thx. Regarding oops, yep... I guess that the rareness or infrequency of this phenomenon (of beginning a word with the vowel of put) makes some people pronounce the word oops with the vowel of food, or with the consonant w followed by the vowel of wood. HOTmag (talk) 13:01, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Maybe a Cockney saying "hood" or "hoof" or "hook", for example. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:29, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

For the same reason they also say "an horse" and likewise. HOTmag (talk) 20:12, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

"A policeman's lot is not an 'appy one..." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:01, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Whether E is, an honest one (as I'm used to say), or a honest one (as our Hungarian cop is used to say). HOTmag (talk) 10:19, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Question 3

On 3, yes that is normal speech but we are more likely to say "five and a half kilos". --Viennese Waltz 15:45, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

In American English, the abbrevation "kilo" standing alone (with no specific substance mentioned) can sometimes have connotations of drug-smuggling, while unabbreviated "kilogram" could suggest science experiments... In U.S. supermarkets, soda (soft drink) bottles are sold in units of liters, but otherwise the metric system isn't used too much for everyday common items that people often buy, so that metric units can sometimes have foreign or scientific connotations. AnonMoos (talk) 15:57, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

In Britain, kilograms are sometimes abbreviated to "kay-gees" (in London at least). Alansplodge (talk) 13:35, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

October 30

List of animals by gender

Could you add your examples to my list, that now includes five pairs only: bull cow, horse mare, rooster hen, dog bitch, fox vixen.

I don't need nouns with the prefix "she" (e.g. she-ape, she-ass, she-bear, she-camel, she-cat, she-crab, she-elephant, she-fox, she-goat, she-wolf, and the like), nor nouns with the suffix "ess" (e.g. lioness, tigress, and the like). HOTmag (talk) 01:30, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

The "bull and cow" pair and the "duck and drake" pair are interesting, since the female term is used to refer to the species as a whole, contrary to the unmarked masculine default presumptions which apply elsewhere in English. In the "ram and ewe" pair, "ewe" is a very old word which goes back to Indo-European, and originally referred to the species as a whole (though not in modern English)... AnonMoos (talk) 02:36, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

P.S. If you're excluding words with feminine prefixes or suffixes, then "vixen" originally had a feminine suffix (though quite opaque in modern English). There's also billy-goat and nanny-goat for gender indicators other than "-ess" or "she-"... AnonMoos (talk) 02:40, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Wiktionary has categories wikt:Category:en:Female_animals and wikt:Category:en:Male_animals. Of course you will still have to filter out all the elephantesses and she-walruses, and then match the remaining female animals to male counterparts (some of which are missing, since the male list is shorter). And many of these are weird and obscure, such as ram-cat. There are also cases where the same words apply to different animals in different pairings. For instance, doe is a female deer, rabbit, kangaroo, or squirrel, but buck is a male deer, rabbit, kangaroo, or shad (a kind of fish). (A female shad is however a hen, so here we have the pair buck/hen.) Then again, you can probably call a male squirrel a buck if you want to. You can probably call it a dog-squirrel if you want to - the odds of confusing people increase slightly, but really you can reach for any suitable metaphor in a crisis like this where you don't know what the word is, because nobody else knows either. Cock-squirrel, for instance, would still be comprehensible.

One common pair you missed is gander/goose. It may be stallion/mare (but beware all the other gendered words for horses of specific status, such as colt and filly, not to mention gelding). Then there's drone/queen/worker (bees are complicated). Rooster has synonyms cock and cockerel. In the form cock/hen this applies to most birds, and some fish. Male deer are not only bucks but sometimes stags or harts. Male cats can be toms, but female cats are just cats. Female pigs can be sows, but male pigs are just pigs. (Edit: or boars, in fact. Though of course a boar, as in wild boar, is a kind of pig, leading to the existence of female boars, and I suppose boar-boars. Forgive me if this is boaring.)  Card Zero  (talk) 05:23, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

"Gander and Goose" is another pair where the female term also refers to the species as a whole... AnonMoos (talk) 15:44, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

As with "Goosey Goosey Gander". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:36, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

You might want to consider the Yak. In English this has come to designate both sexes, but in the local languages from which it is derived, it refers only to the male, the female being (something like a) dri, nag or hYag-mo (my grasp of Tibetan is nonexistant). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 15:40, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia has an extensive list of animal names that gives male and female variants. Shantavira|^{feed me} 10:54, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Excellent, if surprising in places. I see sloths, anteaters, armadillos, racoons and kinkajous all get the titles sow and boar.  Card Zero  (talk) 12:03, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

A lot of these rare uses are ad hoc extensions that are copied over and over in lists because they found their way in print somewhere and are now self-replicating. It would be nice to have a list that distinguishes ad hoc [or even jocular] words and uses from ones that people actually use in normal speech. — kwami (talk) 23:31, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Minor capitalization question

Is it "1st and 2nd Armies" or "1st and 2nd armies"? Clarityfiend (talk) 13:14, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

1st Army and 2nd Army are proper nouns, chief 130.74.59.162 (talk) 15:17, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Then there's the First United States Army Group commanded by Gen. Patton, which only existed on paper! AnonMoos (talk) 15:44, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

October 31

Translating npc chatter from AC Odyssey

Greek. Sounds like:

• "ALOKOTON TAMALA."
• "E! IGIGNETE!"
• "OPTALMINO VOSSEVUSSI"
• "PAFSON TUTU?"
• "PAFSE!"
• "DEVRONEXO! PROSSO!"
• "UKETI!"
• SINELFE, SINELFE!"

2A0D:6FC0:E95:CA00:3C00:EDC6:C79E:5A34 (talk) 02:27, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

That's Assassin's Creed Odyssey, to clarify. So these are presumably Ancient Greek. Perhaps even specifically Attic and Doric varieties.  Card Zero  (talk) 08:12, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

I only recognize "uketi", which is οὐκέτι, "no more, no longer". "pafse" may be παύσε (in a more modern pronunciation), i.e. "Stop!". "pafson tutu" is the same verb, but unclear which grammatical form. Maybe first person singular, the "s" indicates a future tense (or one of the tenses/moods/aspects that I haven't learned yet), παύσω τούτου, "shall I stop this?" (although τούτου is genitive, and accusative τοῦτον/τοῦτο might make more sense)? --Wrongfilter (talk) 08:55, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

I had a vague idea that "DEVRONEXO! PROSSO!" might be something like thunder upon!, but in this I'm just grabbing at the first vaguely similar words I see and guessing.  Card Zero  (talk) 09:52, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

I guess "Optalmino" could be some dual inflected form of "Ophtalmos" (eye). If this is based on phonetical approximation from an outside perspective, I guess errors in transcription is likely, though. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:55, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

The Attic pronunciation of ὀφθαλμός was /opʰ.tʰal.mós/, with aspirated stops.  --Lambiam 13:20, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

”SINELFE” could be “σῠ́νελθε” from wikt:συνέρχομαι. —Amble (talk) 15:44, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

”E! IGIGNETE!” could be "εἰ γίγνεται”, “if it happens”? —Amble (talk) 15:59, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Might this be an example of Minionese: that is, something deliberately meant to suggest some form of ancient Greek without being actually meaningful? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 19:37, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Not likely. The other AC games keep to meaningful chatter - OP 2A0D:6FC0:E95:CA00:1989:7FB0:ABB4:1B53 (talk) 21:10, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

"DEVRONEXO!" must be "el:wikt:δεῦρο ἔξω", "come out!". This phrase appears in the story of the raising of Lazarus in John 11. —Amble (talk) 21:36, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

"PROSSO": wikt:πρόσω, also wikt:πρόσσω, “forward”. —Amble (talk) 02:13, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

"ALOKOTON TAMALA": see el:wikt:ἀλλόκοτος, el:wikt:τα μάλα, "rather strange." --Amble (talk) 21:20, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

November 4

Five questions

1. When has British English last had more native speakers than American English?

2. Why is word Canada not spelled by letter K, if it comes from word kanata?

3. If "four and a quarter metres" means 4.75, or 43⁄4 metres, how can a distance exactly one-third on the way from 4 to 5 metres be indicated? Is it "four and one-third metres", or 41⁄3 metres? "4.33333... metres" would seem too bad to write.

4. In which English-speaking region is the 24-hour clock in speech the most common? In such area, people would always read times from a 24-hour display as 24-hour times.

5. Does 12-hour clock have a written form in languages like German and French?

--40bus (talk) 11:31, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

how often do you dedicate to come up with these frivolous questions ?

don't you recognize how presumptuous it is of you to apportion with bold heading the subsections for answering to each of your question, and the required zone for contention between the contributors, and the practice of intense interpretation of the text, and,

to what end should i answer you, and, what is your purpose, not only in doing this, but in general ? 130.74.59.145 (talk) 21:16, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Actually, 40bus is not the one who usually divides into subsections (check the page history). See here for my own previous annoyance, but 40bus is not as repetitive than he was then... AnonMoos (talk) 20:49, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, the division is generally made by others, purely for practical purposes. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:15, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Question 1

Last time I looked, the population of the U K was about 70 million and the population of the U S was about three times that. It's not too difficult to establish when immigration caused the population of the U S to equal and then exceed that of the U K - the problem is establishing how many are native speakers, which may be difficult or impossible to do. 2A00:23D0:D0F:E01:981A:FAE:EEA4:598F (talk) 15:22, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

As the other anonymous reply notes, it should be easy to identify when the population of the US overtook that of the UK. And with sensible assumptions you could work out similar figures for just English speakers. I would think though that it happened when there was no distinction made between American and British English, which is a largely modern distinction, especially for the spoken language. A lot of the differences e.g. are to do with modern inventions such as cars/automobiles, motorway/freeway, or in modern uses of slang. Both are much more similar to each other than they are to the language spoken by Victorians. Spelling differences may have arisen earlier but you ask about speakers, not writers.--2A04:4A43:984F:F027:316B:EC1E:5955:64E2 (talk) 21:33, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

English people who visited British North America / the United States in the late 18th century commented that the marked local or regional dialects which existed in the UK had mostly kind of been smoothed out in the United States (though of course, that didn't mean that everybody in the US spoke what was then considered British standard English). In the 19th century, British pronunciation developments stopped influencing United States English, and some prominent regional dialects started developing within the United States (especially Southern vs. non-Southern). AnonMoos (talk) 18:03, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Maybe another question, but I have never really understood how Southern American English originated. Somewhat arguably, Standard American English does seem to have originated mostly in Western British dialects, and Australian English comes more or less from convict cockney, but Southern American sounds very distinct. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:18, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Check out this link https://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam033/2002073585.pdf The authors --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:57, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Question 2

2: because before non-front vowels <c> and <k> were (and still are) equivalent, and the habit had not yet arisen of using <k> rather than <c> for foreign names. Compare wikt:Corea#English. ColinFine (talk) 14:14, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

The word "Canada" was coined by the French from the original Iroquoian at a time when the letter "k" was hardly used in France, and before there was a formal writing system for Iroquoian. The choice of initial has absolutely no incidence on the pronunciation. Xuxl (talk) 14:28, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Question 3

3. You can write "four and a third metres", 4+1⁄3m, or 4.3 m. (@40bus: Note your "four and a quarter metres" means 4.25 or 4+1⁄4, not what your wrote.) Bazza 7 (talk) 12:34, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

@40bus: There is a mistake in your question. "Four and a quarter metres" does not mean 4.75m, or 4¾m, as you say – it means 4.25m or 4¼m. It means "four metres plus one quarter of a metre". Spideog (talk) 08:45, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Question 4

In informal speech, I don't think people of any nationality favour the 24-hour clock. After all, on analogue clocks the world over the numbers only go up to 12. 2A00:23D0:D0F:E01:981A:FAE:EEA4:598F (talk) 15:22, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

There are many english-speaking "regions" where qualifying times as "a.m" or "p.m" doesn't occur, such as on flight information displays at airports where 24-hour clock times are always shown. Philvoids (talk) 15:47, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

And yet digital transformation is in progress. Simultaneously with it, some relational patterns are evolving. Do not get tricked by a specific cultural/linguistic/phonetic reluctance ( "..Teen Hour ?!! ) -- Askedonty (talk) 15:50, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

24 hour time is much used in the military (It's also known as "military time" in America). So I would guess the answer may be a region that's mostly or entirely populated by people in the military, e.g. British Indian Ocean Territory. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 16:36, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

In my (British) experience, it depends on circumstances. In a social or domestic setting, people usually express time in 12-hour terms, a.m./morning or p.m./afternoon/evening when the context is ambiguous, but in contexts involving timetable, such as bus and train times (whose timetables are given in 24-hour form) and perhaps things like office-diary bookings, 24-hour terms are usually or often used. Current and ex-military personnel (about 4% of the population), such as my Father, also often use 24-hour times with friends and family, sometimes jokingly but sometimes as an adopted habit: my father even uses the 'Zulu' terminology with me. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 17:17, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Austria or Switzerland? I have a memory that in the Chalet School books (set in the Alps, but I don't know at what period) the English-speaking pupils and staff would refer to times such as "sixteen o'clock". Or possibly this was just invented by EMB-D to cue the reader about exotic European timekeeping? -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 23:26, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Elinor Brent-Dyer had holidayed in the Austrian Tyrol (presumably in her late 20s) where the fictional school was (initially) located before starting the series in 1925, so would have known the local time conventions. The adoption of such terminology by English speakers living in the portrayed circumstances (which seem to have been set contemporarily), whether or not accurate, seems plausible and thus appropriate for a work aimed at an English readership and, given that some of her readership may actually have attended such schools or otherwise be familiar with the milieu, may well have been accurate, though corroboration would be nice. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.7.95.48 (talk) 17:25, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Question 5

In my impression, the 12-hour clock is the most common in informal conversation, such as in the title of the classic Western movie Zwölf Uhr mittags. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:58, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Of course in German you can have written orthographical representation of the spoken 12-hour times, such as "zwölf Uhr" or "zwanzig nach zwei", but if by "written form" 40bus meant a written numeric form, such as "2:20 pm", then for German at least the answer is basically "no". Such a numeric rendering is quite uncommon in German. You'd expect "14:20" in all formal written contexts, and there is no conventionalized equivalent for the "a.m." and "p.m." abbreviations you need for proper 12-hour rendering as in English. (In fact, there isn't even a concept corresponding to the English time intervals of "a.m." and "p.m.". "a.m." could be "nachts", "morgens" or "vormittags", but there isn't a single word easily subsuming all three of these, and likewise, "p.m." could be "nachmittags" or "abends", again without a convenient cover term). You do sometimes find 12-hour rendering in computing, if for no other reason that English-based software systems have user options allowing you to select either 12- or 24-hour time, and German localization then has to come up with something to implement both, but it's not something I as a native speaker would ever expect to actually see. For instance, if you choose 12-hour display in your user preferences on an iPhone, you get plain "2:20" without any indication of "a.m." vs. "p.m.", which feels positively weird. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:33, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

See my answer to Question 4. I'm not convinced that Germany is any different to anywhere else [15]. 2A00:23D0:D0F:E01:981A:FAE:EEA4:598F (talk) 15:22, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Does Spanish have a written numeric form for 12-hour clock? I have seen that Spanish even uses the same "am" and "pm" as English. --40bus (talk) 15:31, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Indeed they do es:Hora. 2A00:23D0:D0F:E01:981A:FAE:EEA4:598F (talk) 15:37, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

This applies to the Hispanophone countries of Latin America, not to Spain.  --Lambiam 20:11, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Dutch is similar to German here. The traditional 12 hour clock is still used in speech (but not always) when the traditional form isn't too long and not too much precision is required. You may find the 12 hour clock in writing, fully written out in letters the way you'd say it, in works of fiction. Practically all other writing, including everything in numeric form, uses the 24 hour clock, midnight expressed as 0:00. In some 19th century railway timetables (last one I found was from 1899) you can find times in the 12 hour clock, sometimes with expressions like v.m. (voormiddag=a.m.) or n.m. (namiddag=p.m.). A timetable from 1928 uses the 24 hour clock, so I suppose the change happened in the early 20th century. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:30, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Even if most European countries writing in 24-hour clock, does any country use word equivalent to "o'clock", "past", "half" and to with number over 12? --40bus (talk) 06:33, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

November 6

"Only emergency exit"

This is the labelling of emergency exits in an office in a non-English speaking country. Do I get it right that this implies the specific emergency exit would be the only one - and the correct word order would be "Emergency exit only" only? --KnightMove (talk) 09:09, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. --Viennese Waltz 10:34, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

The word "only" can be confusing to non-native English speakers, since "only" can often have several possible positions in word ordering without changing its meaning, so that that it can end up being not next to the word or phrase whose meaning it modifies -- yet there are subtle limits as to how far it can move without changing meaning... AnonMoos (talk) 12:52, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

If the message had been "This exit is only an emergency exit", the labelling would have been both unambiguous and grammatically just fine. A standard labelling transformation will turn this sentence into the label "Only an emergency exit". A very common transformation, seen als in headlines, is to remove a definite or indefinite article, resulting in an ambiguous label – the label before the article was removed could have been "The only emergency exit". Labels should ideally be unambiguous, particularly when used as warnings or for emergency situations, but application of common sense helps to find their intended meanings, as in the labellings "Shake before use" and "Keep away from children". Note that "Emergency exit only" is strictly speaking also ambiguous; "exit" can be the subjunctive of the verb "to exit", and the words can theoretically indicate that Emergency better not use the marked door to enter, but only to exit.  --Lambiam 14:00, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

If all else fails, look around that office and see if there are any other emergency exits. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:03, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

wait until you're instructed to carefully slip and fall down （小心地滑） 130.74.58.192 (talk) 04:58, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

November 7

Aqua vitae in Greek

How would you say aqua vitae ("water of life") in Classical Greek? Thanks in advance 45.140.183.21 (talk) 18:08, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Hudor Zoes υδωρ ζωης (sorry I can't conveniently do accents and breathings the way I'm posting this)... AnonMoos (talk) 18:38, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Also, there would be possibilities of including the definite article (which is irrelevant for Latin). AnonMoos (talk) 19:45, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

October 25

Apology

Hi all on the Ref Desks. I've been under a lot of strain AFK recently, and a WP:Wikibreak should have been in order. Many of my posts over the last month or so have been unhelpful, short-tempered, dismissive or otherwise fatuous. I'd like to say sorry to anyone I might have have offended in any way. Please press Ctrl-Alt-Del. MinorProphet (talk) 17:33, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Hang in there. It gets better. Sometimes it helps to talk about what's bothering you, so reach out. DOR (ex-HK) (talk) 18:08, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I hadn't noticed! I thought you were very comprehensive with Vchimpanzee's tech support problems recently.  Card Zero  (talk) 23:17, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I too did not notice anything problematic in your responses. Some questions or reactions irk me too. For your peace of mind, just ignore these and focus on the many questions where you can be really helpful.  --Lambiam 18:47, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your answers regarding the Culture series in the past. They were very helpful. Viriditas (talk) 21:22, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

October 26

Serendipity through error, cuisine edition

This has been discussed close to death, but it keeps coming up in so many different ways that I wanted to ask a question about cuisine. We are all aware at this point about the role errors and mistakes play in scientific discovery and elsewhere. I have only just recently become aware of how this also plays a significant role in new cuisine. Does anyone have a list of dishes that are said to have been created through error? I am reminded of toasted ravioli, but not much else. The reason I'm bringing this up is because the bakery at my local grocery store messes up a batch of bread once a month or so and then puts that batch on sale to get rid of them, except they never once got around to tasting them and realizing how great they are. They are very crunchy, very dense, and similar to the kind of old world Italian sandwich bread local delis used to have in American cities which are all but gone now. Which got me to thinking, there's probably a huge list of foods that were created by mistake, and we don't have an article on them. Viriditas (talk) 20:52, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

ChatGPT seems to indicate that most foods were created by mistake. It lists the following as an answer to my question:

• Chocolate chip cookie, accidentally created by Ruth Wakefield
• Potato chips, accidentally created by George Crum
• Popsicle, accidentally created by Frank Epperson
• Coca-Cola, accidentally created by John Pemberton
• Tarte Tatin, accidentally created by the Tatin sisters
• Corn Flakes, accidentally created by John Harvey Kellogg and his brother Will
• Worcestershire sauce, accidentally created by John Lea and William Perrins
• Ice cream cone, accidentally created by a waffle vendor
• Beer, accidentally discovered in a fermented grain store
• Cheese, accidentally discovered in curdled milk in the presence of rennet
• Slurpee, accidentally created by Omar Knedlik
• Nachos, accidentally created by Ignacio "Nacho" Anaya
• Champagne, accidentally discovered when wine re-fermented

Does this mean such a list would be useless? Viriditas (talk) 21:19, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

The problem with such a list could be "completeness". One way around that would be to create a category instead of an article. Then things could easily be added to it as they're encountered. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:27, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Another problem would be accuracy. Simply checking the linked article on Potato chips shows that recipes had been published decades before the supposed George Crum 'invention' (making it at best a re-invention). Beer was being made least 13,000 years ago, and we cannot possibly know how it was first 'discovered'. The list appears to be merely of stories circulating on the Internet – ChatGPT is not reliable. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 12:19, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

What would you name the category? Viriditas (talk) 21:33, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Maybe "accidental inventions". I expect Silly Putty would be another entry. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:48, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

There could be a parent category "serendipity" for accidental discoveries - but isn't that every discovery? Some are more accidental than others. Well, at least, there could be a subcategory for food, where happy accidents abound (perhaps because accidents in general abound). "Accidental culinary inventions" I guess.  Card Zero  (talk) 01:12, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

It is not clear who should be credited with the discovery of Neptune – Johann Gottfried Galle, Urbain Le Verrier, both? – but in no way, regardless of the answer, was the discovery accidental. They knew precisely what they were looking for, and that was what they found.  --Lambiam 09:56, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

The popular Serbian dish Karađorđeva šnicla was an improvised chicken kiev without the right ingredients.  Card Zero  (talk) 00:53, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

One version of how the Cobb salad was invented indicates it was improvised, if not exactly accidental. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:56, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

The cheese and vinegar in it were originally accidents too, this gets recursive.  Card Zero  (talk) 03:03, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

In the event that anyone is interested in the bread I’m talking about, it’s a failed focaccia al rosmarino. I don’t know exactly what went wrong, but it failed to rise and looks like a flattened pizza, except it’s just thick enough to carefully cut into with a knife and stuff sandwich fixings inside. It’s the greatest thing I’ve ever eaten, and it’s about as wide as a smartphone but twice as long. Sandwich heaven. Viriditas (talk) 08:41, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

There is a generic term "flatbread". Focaccia is already in this category, so your serendipitously flattened focaccia should belong there even more strongly. Many are not crisp, but some are.  --Lambiam 15:33, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Including Matzah. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:45, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I’m aware, but this wasn’t flatbread and it wasn’t focaccia, it was something new and was considered a defective product. It was like a very dense, crispy focaccia. Like I said, this isn’t a product on the market. It’s not something you can go out and buy. It terms of taste, it was quite the hybrid. It tastes like a bagel, looks like focaccia, has the feel of flatbread, but has a crisp, cracker-like exterior. Thinking about it further, I think Lambiam is probably right; this should be considered as a kind of flatbread, but there's really nothing like it. Bagel-like dough, focaccia-like taste, but cracker-like mouth feel. Viriditas (talk) 19:37, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm going to try and talk to the baker tomorrow, but here's what I think happened. They were making bagels and focaccia in separate pans. Something happened, maybe they have a new hire, I don't know, and they accidentally baked a focaccia bagel. No hole, but long, narrow, and wide enough to fit a knife in and cut it open to pack sandwich ingredients inside. Closed on both ends, crispy on top and bottom, soft on the inside. I'm aware there are bagel-like focaccia recipes, but this is much denser and thinner than focaccia. Viriditas (talk) 20:02, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Note, I made an attempt to reach out to the baker responsible for this batch, but they weren't there when I went in. Another baker was there who I discussed the issue with and they said they didn't have any knowledge about it since they were on vacation at the time. But the way they said it made me think that the other baker was experimenting while their supervisor was gone, which would explain the unusual items. Viriditas (talk) 23:31, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

I feel rather pedantic about the use of the word "accident" here. As an example, Pemberton purposely experimented with several igredients to make a non-opioid pain reliever. Among the ingredients were cola nut and damiana. Eventually, he mixed those and got a flavor he liked. Saying this was an accident implies that he was trying to do one thing, such as make a lubricant for a sewing machine, and acturally produced a pain reliever drink. In reality, he intended to make the drink and eventually stumbled across one that he liked. I do not see that as an "accident." 68.187.174.155 (talk) 13:32, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. Viriditas (talk) 16:36, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

October 28

Social choice theory paradox

How is it called when the more people are involved in decision-making, the more subjective and biased (rather than well-thought) such a decision becomes? (Suggesting that for a better decision, it should be made either by one person or by a narrow circle of people, technically implying an authoritarian approach). I guess it's somewhat similar to Arrow's impossibility theorem, but not sure. 212.180.235.46 (talk) 17:42, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

I did not find mentions of the alleged counterintuituive effect of crowd size negatively impacting decision quality. Instead, I see such claims as, "We found that increasing the crowd size improves the quality of the outcome. This improvement is quite large at the beginning and gradually decreases with larger crowd sizes."^[16] Since the cost or effort of determining the crowd decision increases with crowd size and the rate of increase will hardly go down with increasing crowd size, in any given situation there will be an optimal size beyond which the limited gain in outcome quality does not justify the cost increase.

It is established wisdom, experimentally verified, that social influence can have a negative effect on the wisdom of the crowd,^[17] but this effect is not specifically related to crowd size.  --Lambiam 10:06, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

"Choice overload" and "overchoice" were common terms about 30 years ago. I do not know how common they are now. A phrase most people understand that means the same thing is "design by committee". Then, there are many old phrases that refer to the same phenomenon, such as "too many witches spoil the brew." There are many related observations, such as the observation that the intelligence of a crowd is equivalent to the dumbest person in the crowd (which I've heard is actually translated from a Polish phrase used to describe how Hitler's speaches to large crowds were accepted so well). In opposition, there is wisdom of the crowd, which can be confused. You are asking about decisions being made by a crowd. The wisdom of the crowd asks for a specific answer to a question, such as "What is the total number of potatoes that are turned into French Fries every day?" Nobody is likely to know, but everyone will guess. Half will guess too high. Half will guess too low. If you average it all together, you get an answer that tends to be accurate. But, as mentioned, that is entirely different than getting a crowd to decide what font to use for a business presentation. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 16:20, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Old phrases are not reliable sources for the existence of the alleged effect. The so-called jury theorems apply to crowd-based decision making in general, not just to estimating the value of a scalar quantity.  --Lambiam 17:04, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

@Lambiam, taking your first finding we must assume that the premices of the inquiry (inquiries) were reasonably prepared, that the question(s) attracted the attention of a lost of the available experts aware of the related problematics, that only in the end the curious and the bystanders started joining the crowd. That specific claim they made was indeed about data collection campaigns among a preselected population of experts (your link ). Subjectivity and bias maybe would be about dealing with politics, social matters rather than technical matters. Which does not mean that the reduced comitee necessarily starts on healthy premices, that's for sure, only that the individual members of it may stand more under a possible public scrutiny than when they're and after a while lost amongst the crowd. --Askedonty (talk) 21:39, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

The crowdworkers in the experimental setup of the paper were not selected on being experts; the experimenters had no control over the level of expertise of people signing up for the task. Discussing the problem of discrepancies between the reference data and ground truth, the authors of the paper even write, explicitly, "Even if we would replace the crowdworkers with experts, this problem would not be completely solved." Given their evaluation method, also no distinction was made between early and late signers-up. I see no argument why we "must assume" any of what you claim.

All of this is hardly relevant to the original question. Can you find any papers discussing a negative effect of crowd size on outcome quality?  --Lambiam 07:29, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

We had several examples here on Wiki where many editors voting on a particular proposal created a mess and the discussion became sidetracked, ultimately being closed as inconclusive. Don't know about academic papers, but it appears that in some cases the involvement of a greater number of decision-makers shifts the potential well-thought outcome towards inconclusive and biased as the probability of inexperienced and hotheaded people rises. 212.180.235.46 (talk) 08:53, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

In most academic studies, the premise is that individuals first reach their decisions independently, whereupon a fixed algorithm consolidates these many decisions into a single crowd decision. If there is a preceding open discussion, there can be many confounding factors. Some people know how to sound authoritative and persuasive while they actually know next to nothing of the subject matter. Others may sidetrack the discussion by raising issues that, however important by themselves, are not relevant for the issue at hand. People may argue that A because of B, after which discussion may focus on the validity of B, although it has little bearing on the validity of A and refuting B does not tell us anything about A. See also FUD.

Reaching a decision through voting in which there are several alternatives, some of which are mere variants of each other (A1, A2, B1, B2a, B2b, B2c(i), B2c(ii), ...), it makes a tremendous difference how the voting is arranged and which voting system is used. Bad arrangements and systems can lead to outcomes no one wanted. This problem is well known, but independent of crowd size or pre-vote discussions. Without studying the examples you have in mind I can't tell which of these issues made it a mess, but I doubt that the number of voters was by itself a major cause. A greater number of decision makers means that the probability of having experienced, levelheaded and smart people aboard also rises. I see no clear reason why this should have a less powerful effect than the increase in know-nothings and firebrands.

We do not need more anecdotal evidence. I still have seen no references of any kind to papers discussing a negative effect of increased crowd size on outcome quality.  --Lambiam 10:34, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Ok, but what we need is to more explicitly define what we're talking about. Studies are formatted to give a standard ranking, individual, decision-making group, wisdom of crowds. Samples here assorted with two crucial dates, 1904 and 1907. You can't count the public to not wonder whether the concept is not somehow flawed given the events posterior to that era. Then you'll have the (U.S. gov) Library of Medicine, and they do leave it there may exist other corridors behind some doors: "... group decision-making was not better than the wisdom of crowds, showing inconsistency with the results of Navajas et al. (2018)." They agree that parametrization of the sudies do play some role: "This inconsistency in result occurs because of no difference found in creativity and utilization of resources between group decision-making and the wisdom of crowds in complex information integration", "because confidence cannot accurately predict correct answers", "weighting confidence would lead to worse rank aggregation". The landscape left behind should not be so arid that the people wonder whether the scientists simply were reluctant to jeopardize their position (mustard gas, you know all that trenches stuff etc.) --Askedonty (talk) 12:50, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

One may hope that reports on studies examining the effect of crowd size on outcome quality define the assumptions, the procedure and the quality measure. We do not have to decide that for them here. There are actually many such papers and even whole books, which use different definitions and methods. What we are still missing is references to studies that support the allegation of the OP.  --Lambiam 14:42, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

October 30

Standing on the gasoline station in Poland because the car doesn't turn on

Hi there, my car did turn off while I reached by chance a gas station nearby and well I stayed there to look what's the problem. I tried to get the car running till the Battery was dead. Sure thing I took the battery and moved the care to a parking slot and told my problem, the battery is dead and the car doesn't turn on for further inspections I need to go home load the battery for 24 hours at least.

Well the worker said, yeah okay, he saw the car in the camera I guess since i told him which car.

I returned 56 hours later (battery was charging for 28 hours till the green light showed battery is full) and since it's not that easy to reach the station it took its time.

Coming there, the car immediately started with the full battery after 3 tries and than a woman camed telling me, the car is staying 5 days I have to pay and no one was informed who's car is it and why the car stands. And the car stands on a place for trucks not for cars.

I clearly told the woman, I was talking to a male worker about my car issues and that I need a load battery and nobody has informed me that there is any cost or that the car is placed wrong. I really feel disrespected since I got to understand that nobody has to inform me if the parking place is casting anything or not, it would be my job to clear that and I can't park longer than 24 hours. (You remember I told the guy in the gas station my battery will charge at least 24 hours, since I don't want to come with a half loaded battery and have only few tries till the Battery dies again, I want to have as much energy as possible till the Battery would die again.)

Do you think I really have to pay for this car leaving? --78.88.93.197 (talk) 17:37, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 18:19, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Aha, so you would be also glad in this situation if nobody told you the parking isn't for free and when you come they ask you to pay instead of informing in first it's not for free ? --78.88.93.197 (talk) 19:05, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Why did the woman say "5 days" when you were only gone for 3? And if there is an established charge per day for parking, where do they inform the public of this? This seems like an informal contract where the presence or absence of signs might be important. Speaking of which, we have a sign at the top of this page that says "We don't answer questions that require legal advice." That's because, as non-professionals, we're not very good at it and we'll make your problem worse.  Card Zero  (talk) 20:12, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Plus, the probability of running across a Polish lawyer here is probably low. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:43, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

October 31

What part of Wikipedia should I go to for writing criticism about this website?

… 209.195.249.118 (talk) 15:01, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It is not a chat site or a blog host. If you want to express your thoughts about various subjects, search for sites that provide blogging services. There are many to choose from. If you have suggestions for improving specific articles, you are very welcome to discuss your suggestions on the talk pages of those articles. Or if there is something that needs to be fixed, be bold and fix whatever does not reflect verifiable sources, notability, and other policies. 85.76.32.204 (talk) 15:35, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

If you experience technical problems in using Wikipedia, Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) is the place to mention them. If you think Wikipedia could be improved by specific, not policy-related changes, propose them at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals).  --Lambiam 19:45, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

If you think a specific article is badly written, criticize it on that article's Talk page; or you can change it yourself, but be prepared to give reasons for your changes if someone disagrees. This is how articles are improved by many hands over time. —Tamfang (talk) 01:51, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

• @IP.118. You should create an account on Wikipediocracy, the self-styled "The Wikipedia Critics' Forum". You will not find a body of more intelligent individuals committed to nuanced and analytical commentary of both Wikipedia's public image and internal processes. You will be in good company; several upstanding members of this community already have accounts there, such as Users Just Step Sideways, Carrite and Levivich. Good luck! SerialNumber54129 13:05, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

  Blimey, they must be intelligent! Martinevans123 (talk) 13:08, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

  @Martinevans123: So good I named it twice  :) SerialNumber54129 14:08, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

  Ah great. So not just a seething cauldron of disaffected and banned editors, after all. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:12, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

  See also Wikipedia Review. Alansplodge (talk) 13:50, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

  The URL for Wikipedia Review is not working for me. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:10, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

  What's the one where the bizarre dude rants to himself all day? SerialNumber54129 14:08, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

  I wouldn't encourage anyone to look at that particular site. Also Wikipedia Review seems to be down. No great loss there. Just Step Sideways ^{from this world ..... today} 21:10, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Just don't fall into the trap of finding some errors in an article on a subject you're very conversant with, and concluding that "Wikipedia is absolute rubbish and should be avoided by all serious scholars". That was pretty much the view of a friend of mine after he asked what "this Wikipedia thing" is all about, about 20 years ago. Sight unseen, he instantly concluded the concept could not possibly work, or if it did, the results would be garbage and he'd be having nothing to do with it. I must ask him, next time I see him, how often he uses WP in his academic research as a licensed psychotherapist. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 17:39, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Editors probably need all the licensed psychotherapists they can get... But so glad not a "floating island of garbage". Martinevans123 (talk) 19:40, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Isn't evasion of the mentioned trap just Gell-Mann amnesia? Folly Mox (talk) 14:07, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

November 1

Noodles

And by the way, why are glass noodles so much more calorific than their egg counterparts? (running at about 350 cals/100g compared to 150 cals,) Bon appetit. SerialNumber54129 13:10, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Is this cooked or uncooked? The USDA's FoodData Central database gives

• 351 kcal / 100 g for "Noodles, chinese, cellophane or long rice (mung beans), dehydrated"^[18] and
• 384 kcal / 100 g for "Noodles, egg, dry, unenriched"^[19] and
• 138 kcal / 100 g for "Noodles, egg, unenriched, cooked, without added salt".^[20]

 --Lambiam 19:22, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

@Lambiam: cooked, I think. SerialNumber54129 20:31, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Since cellophane noodles also increase substantially in weight by cooking, I suspect that your date are for uncooked cellophane noodles. The data I find on the web for cooked cellophane noodles are all over the place.  --Lambiam 21:09, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

That's why google and other search engines were invented. :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 07:25, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Tio be fair, my question was why calorifically one != the other. It's not that important: a good dollop of bean paste mixed in with a bowlful is food of the gods  :) SerialNumber54129 12:58, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

November 2

New York presidential electors

Hello. The state of New York, joins the other states that punish faithless electors, with a special law. However, I can't understand one thing: presidential electors, (this year there will be 28), cast their pro-forma vote on a ballot, with the candidates' names already written on the same ballot, and so they don't have to do anything else; to cast their vote, they simply have to put it in a ballot box. But if so, since they cannot change their vote, what is the point of binding the presidential electors themselves? Unless the ballot changes: we shall see. Thank you. 93.150.80.20 (talk) 14:37, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

That they don't have to do anything else does not imply they can't do anything else. They could scratch out the written names and write in other names before putting the ballot they were handed in the ballot box. Or they might come in prepared with an alternative ballot in hand and put that one in the ballot box.  --Lambiam 19:53, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

They could also refuse to sign. Because so many states are pre-printing the ballots, it is easier to wait until the last moment and refuse to sign than to try and trick the system with a different vote. So, the point of binding the electors is to make sure you have people who will not make a spectacle of the process at the last moment unless they agree to the punishment for doing do. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 12:31, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Font to ID

I'm trying my hand at learning vector drawing and I figured I would try cleaning up some WP images that need vectorization. Does anyone know what font is being used in the image here? The user that initially uploaded it is no longer active. Thanks! Matt Deres (talk) 22:35, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Never mind. It's Impact. Matt Deres (talk) 22:40, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

sweet sweet anachronism —Tamfang (talk) 01:23, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Question regarding notable topic choosing

What is a good notable topic? Everything has already been written about. NoBrainFound (talk) 22:58, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Given that determining notability is a major (and initial) part of the work of creating an article, it is unlikely that many people have spent time finding notable subjects and then not gone on to create the article.

Requested articles is a place where people have made suggestions; but in most cases they have done nothing to determine whether the subject is notable.

Your question takes me back to nearly twenty years ago, when I was a new editor, and desperately looking for a topic that I could write an article about to "make my mark" on Wikipedia. Since then I have learnt that creating articles is not the only way to improve Wikipedia. We have hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of seriously deficient articles that are crying out for keen editors to improve them (or in some cases, nominate them for deletion). For some strange reason, not many editors seem to want to spend their time in this way (and I don't much, either: I mostly spend my Wikipedia time on the help and reference desks, helping other editors). ColinFine (talk) 23:36, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

"Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further developments." Frontinus (c. 40–103 AD)

"In this field [physics], almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few unimportant holes." Philipp von Jolly, 1878. Clarityfiend (talk) 04:59, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Hmm, Frontinus' words are discussed here and translated very differently: "Having set aside siegeworks and siege engines, because their discovery was completed long ago (so I attend no further to any material from those arts)...". --Antiquary (talk) 08:48, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

We don't know the level at which you can contribute, but there are many notable topics on which we do not have an article. One example is pseudospin, a concept used in the description of the quantum state of two-level systems. One readable treatment can be found here; a different approach to introducing the concept can be seen here. It would probably be best to start with a relatively simple stub article. We already have an article on the Bloch sphere and a redirect from Bloch vector to that article.  --Lambiam 08:41, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

November 3

Official website of Sumiton, Alabama

What is the official website of Sumiton, Alabama? The domain thecityofsumiton.com has been usurped, and I am unsure if thecityofsumiton.org is the new official site. Cherry Cotton Candy (talk) 09:37, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

The pages of that site have at the bottom "© 2021 THE CITY OF SUMITON".  --Lambiam 14:05, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Psychology

Which of the Big Five personality traits is the most closely correlated with self-confidence? Camph26 (talk) 13:38, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

People who score high on neuroticism are more likely to interpret ordinary situations as threatening and can perceive minor frustrations as hopelessly difficult. This is negatively correlated with self-confidence. In fact, here the neuroticism trait is called "a measure of a person's emotional stability and self-confidence".  --Lambiam 13:57, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Inheriting our looks

Another Wikipedian famously posted images of their son and daughter. Their son looks exactly like them and their daughter looks exactly like their wife. However, this isn't true at all with my relatives. All joking aside, why do some children end up looking exactly like their parents while others do not? In my family, for example, we all, both on my mother's and my father's side, take after our grandfathers, great-grandfathers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers, not our immediate parents. This also goes for my first cousins, who do not look like their parents but their grandfathers and great-grandfathers. Any ideas? And yes, I've had genetic testing done, and my parents are my parents. :-) Viriditas (talk) 23:40, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Pure chance. An individual's more striking facial features are largely determined by a limited number of genes. Biological inheritance is a complicated subject, but the expected distribution of specific gene combinations can reasonably be assumed to be governed by Mendelian inheritance. Every now and then the random gene shuffles in combination with such phenomena as dominance will produce offspring looking much more like one parent than the other, or more like an ancestor of an earlier generation.  --Lambiam 05:50, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Surely someone has studied the "Mini-Me" phenomenon, where a parent produces offspring that looks somewhat identical to themselves? Viriditas (talk) 09:14, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

I just had a very similar conversation with a reference person and he showed me multiple studies. It turned out that soft tissue is based on a very small set of genes and human facial recognition is biased by soft tissue structures, mainly the nose and ears. That is why when you look at a family, you notice that they all pretty much have the same nose and ears. It is also why there is the affect that people from a different countries tend to look alike, because your brain is simply telling you that their noses and ears look different and they all get clumped together. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 13:02, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Then there is the issue that in mate selection there is a preferential tendency for mates whose faces appear similar to one's own face.^[21] This increases the likelihood of spitting-image offspring.  --Lambiam 15:23, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

November 6

Fake vote

Hi, I am reposting my request with the hope of better luck. Now, with the understanding that the thing itself is worthless as obvious, the image in the link depicts fake Arizona electors casting their “votes” on a fake ballot for Trump in 2020. If you look at the image, I even tried to enlarge it but couldn't understand much, how were these “electors” casting this fake vote? The ballot seems drawn in such a way that maybe they had to put their signatures on it, but you can't see much. It's just a little curiosity, but I want to take it off anyway. Thank you. https://eu.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2022/01/22/how-arizonas-trump-electors-planned-deliver-him-victory/6604574001/ 93.147.230.249 (talk) 17:30, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Your link is behind a paywall, so it is not accessible. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 18:16, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Page 353 of the final report of the January 6 Select Committee contains an image of the true and the fake Arizona ballots, side by side. It can also be seen, with a lower resolution, here.  --Lambiam 07:49, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

November 7

Vote-counting mode

Hi. Ballots are counted by scanners in a central counting station, along with postal ballots. If there is this general counting mode, why can the machines (again optical scanners) placed in polling stations with closed ballot boxes, since they are configured to do so, also print the results, before the ballots can be transported to the counting center? If then the central count and precicnt count do not match? Thank you very much. 93.147.230.249 (talk) 13:01, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Your question does not make sense. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:39, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

You need to specify exactly which voting location you are referring to. There are many wildly different methods of voting across the United States. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 18:20, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Let's take Miami-Dade County. This county uses ballot-counting machines (optical scanners), which print the results on a paper ribbon once the polls are closed. After counting at the precinct level, the ballots are equally transported and counted in a central facility?

Language

I want to know more about English language.when it started 105.234.178.192 (talk) 13:49, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

See History of English. --Wrongfilter (talk) 14:07, 7 November 2024 (UTC)