Wikipedia:Reference desk/all

Wikipedia Reference Desk – All recent questions	Search Wikipedia:
WP:RD/ALL redirects here. You may also be looking for Wikipedia:Resolving disputes, Wikipedia:Redirect or Wikipedia:Deletion review. This page lists all the recent questions asked on the Wikipedia reference desk by category. To ask a new question, please select one of the categories below. To answer a question, click on the "edit" link beside the question. Return to the Reference Desk main page... For information on any topic, choose a category for your question:
Computers and IT Science Mathematics Humanities Computing, information technology, electronics, software and hardware Biology, chemistry, physics, medicine, geology, engineering and technology Mathematics, geometry, probability, and statistics History, politics, literature, religion, philosophy, law, finance, economics, art, and society Language Entertainment Miscellaneous Archives Spelling, grammar, word etymology, linguistics, language usage, and requesting translations Sports, popular culture, movies, music, video games, and TV shows Subjects that don't fit in any of the other categories Old questions are archived daily Help desk Village pump Ask general questions about using Wikipedia Ask about specific policies and operations of Wikipedia Help manual MediaWiki handbook Citing Wikipedia Resolving disputes Virtual classroom Information and instructions on every aspect of Wikipedia Information about the software that runs Wikipedia How to cite Wikipedia as a reference For resolving issues between users An advanced guide on everything Wikipedia See also the Wikipedia department directory
The following images are being used under the GNU FDL and/or the CC-BY-SA license: P computing.svg, P physics.svg, P mathematics.svg, P question.svg, P art.png, P literature.svg, P music.svg, P archive.svg, P Airplane.png

October 29

Late '90s/early 2000s MIDI generator?

Hello, I'm sure I've asked this before, at least once and likely twice or more, several years ago, but I've lost track of the answer in the interim so I'm asking again.

I'm looking for a procedural MIDI generation software that existed probably by the year 2000. I do not remember what the name was; it was something similar to, but not, 'DirectMusic Composer'. It was relatively limited, but easy to use. When using it, you could pick from a selection of styles; for each style, you could select from a list of instrument sets, and a list of 'moods' that were available for that style, and you could move the instruments around on a 2D square to make them quieter, louder, or more towards the left or right side; you could set the song length, and enable or disable intro and outtro; and you could export the results to MIDI.

The program was used to create some part of the music for the turn-of-the-millennium MMO "Graal Online"; consequently, examples of what the MIDI music output could sound like can be found here (played with the default Windows soundfont) and in this playlist (played with a different soundfont).

Can you help me figure out what this program was, please?

2600:6C55:4A00:A18:A1E5:7EDB:844:C2C4 (talk) 23:49, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Found it. Microsoft Music Producer. Thank you! 2600:6C55:4A00:A18:A1E5:7EDB:844:C2C4 (talk) 00:05, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

October 31

Unsafe connection

How comes I get an unsafe connection message for an https:// site? The address bar shows https://www.--.--.--. But the on-screen message is The connection has timed out / An error occurred during a connection to www.---.--.--. The strange thing is that the address bar says it's a secure site, but the error message doesn't (and nor does Firefox's site information). Thoughts? SerialNumber54129 16:38, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

The error message does not specify the communication protocol. This does not imply the protocol was less secure.  --Lambiam 20:56, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

November 1

360 street view images

Are there any cars with cameras that are built-in in a way such that you can extract 360 street view images from them? Like Google street view, but without any added parts. ―Panamitsu (talk) 07:00, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Most likely not. Tesla is an example. It is covered in cameras for full view, but the cameras are 720p, which is too low quality to get usable images as the vehicle speeds down the road. There isn't much reason for them to have better cameras. So, why would any other vehicle have high quality cameras all around? 68.187.174.155 (talk) 12:35, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Formula One and other racing cars often have multiple cameras, used for both TV broadcast views and for monitoring body parts at speed; some are mandatory and some optional. It may be that a particular one could have sufficient that a computer could reconstruct a 360° view (though this would not be routinely done). However, this is a very special case doubtless outside your scope of enquiry. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 13:20, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

November 2

Please Simplify - What is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?

Please help me to list down the resourses from where I can learn more on What is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)? be it a course or from any blog - Thanks in Advance MPBhopal (talk) 11:11, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

@MPBhopal Maybe the same as query optimization? Shantavira|^{feed me} 16:32, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

The term Answer engine redirects to our article Question answering, which needs to be updated. This page about the Brave browser's answer engine might make a good source.

An answer engine is a system that tries to answer a question, rather than point to websites about the question. Thanks to the proliferation and quality of large language models (LLMs), search-integrated answer engines are now a possibility at scale. In fact, several companies that operate search engines have released similar systems (including Bing Copilot and Google Gemini).

Crucially, these LLM-type answer engines rely on Retrieval-augmented generation:

The secret ingredient of an answer engine is not the LLM that powers it [...] an effective answer engine requires both a model and access to a search engine.

So Answer Engine Optimization is a branch of Search Engine Optimization. Here "optimization" is used in the sense of making things worse for everybody. It is an attempt to promote websites - or perhaps product names - to bias search engine results and the answers provided by an LLM that has accessed the search engine, and summarized the sites it found, on behalf of a user. This comment from a Hacker News thread about ChatGPT Search gives a clue about the details of these shenanigans:

> Why would anyone ever publish stuff on the web for free unless it was just a hobby? So that ChatGPT mentions you, not your competitor, in the answer to the user. I have seen multiple SEO agencies already advertise that.

It's worth noting that one reason for the popularity of LLMs as a replacement for direct web searching is that they are currently sidestepping SEO manipulation. From another comment on that thread:

Third search (company name) got me an ENTIRE PAGE of ads and SEO optimized pages before the actual link to the actual product.

So this AEO thing is the latest development in the arms race between those seeking to enable product promoters and those trying to provide unbiased search results. (Within a large search company like Google or Bing, these may merely be different departments.) The objective is to defeat the use of LLMs to improve search results.

You apparently want a how-to guide. Such a guide would be hot property at the moment, I expect. That is to say, I would be surprised if anyone skilled in making money from the promotion of websites was willing to give away their secret methods for doing this in the very much hyped current context of LLMs, without also seeking money for sharing these putative secrets.

Edit: of course, that money could come from Google ads. Since manipulating search rankings is their business, it will presumably be easy to find the sites of those most competent at it, yet difficult to find the most useful guidance.  Card Zero  (talk) 16:57, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

November 4

floating-point "accuracy"

It's frequently stated that computer floating point is "inherently inaccurate", because of things like the way the C code

float f = 1. / 10.;
printf("%.15f\n", f);

tends to print 0.100000001490116.

Now, I know full well why it prints 0.100000001490116, since the decimal fraction 0.1 isn't representable in binary. That's not the question.

My question concerns those words "inherently inaccurate", which I've come to believe are, well, inaccurate. I believe that computer floating point is as accurate as the numbers you feed into it and the algorithms you use on them, and that it is also extremely precise (120 parts per billion for single precision, 220 parts per quintillion for double precision.) So I would say that floating point is not inaccurate, although it is indeed "inherently imprecise", although that's obviously no surprise, since its precision is inherently finite (24 bits for single precision, 53 bits for double, both assuming IEEE 754).

The other thing about binary floating point is that since it's done in base 2, its imprecisions show up differently than they would in base 10, which is what leads to the 0.100000001490116 anomaly I started this question with. (Me, I would say that those extra nonzero digits …1490116 are neither "inaccurate" nor "imprecise"; they're basically just false precision, since they're beyond the precision limit of float32.)

But I can see from our page on accuracy and precision that there are a number of subtly different definitions of these terms, so perhaps saying that floating point is "inherently inaccurate" isn't as wrong as I've been thinking.

So my question is just, what do other people think? Am I missing something? Is saying "floating point is inherently inaccurate" an informal but inaccurate approximation, or is it meaningful? —scs (talk) 13:50, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Wiktionary: accurate says "accurate ... Telling the truth or giving a true result; exact", but float is not exact so it is not accurate in that sense. 213.126.69.28 (talk) 14:10, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

See also Floating-point arithmetic § Accuracy problems. What is not mentioned, is the problem that little inaccuracies can accumulate. For example, consider this code:

x = 0.1
for i in range(62):
  x = 4*x*(1-x)

The true mathematical value computed, rounded to 15 decimals, is 0.256412535470218, but the value computed using IEEE floating point arithmetic will come out as 0.988021660873313.  --Lambiam 16:06, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

@Lambiam: Cute example. (Does it have a name?) Lately I've been impressed at how often cascading precision loss isn't a problem, although it's certainly one of the things you always have to watch out for, as here. (It's why I said "as accurate as... the algorithms you use on them".) —scs (talk) 14:28, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

See Logistic map § Solution when r = 4.  --Lambiam 20:01, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

@Lambiam: Aha: An "archetypal example of complex, chaotic behaviour". So we shouldn't be too surprised it's particularly sensitive to slight computational differences along the way... :-) —scs (talk) 22:48, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

The basic floating point operations are as accurate as it possible for them to be and the specification normally talks about precision which measures the unavoidable deviation from being completely accurate. But no-one is going to carp about calling it inaccurate! NadVolum (talk) 16:57, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

@NadVolum: I am here to prove you wrong, because that is exactly what I am carping about! :-) —scs (talk) 17:31, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

There are two issues with floating point numbers that are both wrapped up in "they are not accurate." I personally never say that. What I say is that the same number can be stored in memory different ways. For example, a human can tell you that 10e4 and 100e3 are the same number. But, to a computer, they are different. It doesn't parse out the value and computer 100000 and 100000. It compares exactly what it sees. 10e4 and 100e3 are not the same. Of course, computers use binary, not decimal, but that isn't the point. The point is that you have the same value being stored in different ways. You, as the human, don't control it. As you do operations on a value in memory, the value updates and the exact way it is stored can change. Separately, floating point numbers do tend to drift at the very end. So, 3.000000... can become 2.99999999... or 3.00000000....0001. That is not "wildy" inaccurate. But, 2.99999... is not the same value as 3.00000. In the end, why do we care? It comes down to programming. If you have two floating point variables x and y and you want to know if they are the same value, you can't simply compare x==y and hope to get the right answer. What if x is 3.00000.... and y is 2.99999...? Instead, you do something like abs(x-y)<0.000000001. Then, if there is a little drift or if the two numbers are the same value but stored slightly different, you get the correct answer. This came to a head way back in the 80s when there was a flame war about making the early c++ compiler automatically convert x==y to abs(x-y)<0.0000000000000000001. But, what I believe you are arguing is that memory storage should be fixed instead of the programming so the numbers are always stored in the exact same format and there is never ever any drift of any kind. That would be more difficult in my opinion. 17:24, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

That's not what I was saying, but thanks for your reply. [P.S. 10e4 and 100e3 are the same number, in any normalized floating-point format; they're both stored as 1.52587890625 × 2¹⁶, or more to the point, in binary as 1.10000110101₂ × 2¹⁶.] [P.P.S. Testing fabs(x - y) < some_small_number is not a very good way of doing it, but that wasn't the question, either.] —scs (talk) 20:12, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

A fundamental problem is that numbers represented in numerical form, whether on paper or in a computer, are rational numbers. In print, we typically have numbers of the form $m\cdot 10^{n},$ where $m$ and $n$ are whole numbers. In computers, $m\cdot 2^{n}$ is more common. However, most numbers are not rational. There is no way to compute the exact value of, for example, ${\frac {\ln 24591257752}{\pi {\sqrt {48}}}}.$ There is no known algorithm that will decide in general whether the mathematical value of such an expression with transcendental functions is itself transcendental, so at a branch asking whether this value is equal to $1$ we have no better recourse than computing this with limited accuracy and making a decision that may be incorrect.

BTW, "comparison tolerance" was a feature of APL.^[1] The "fuzz", as it was colloquially called, was not a fixed constant but was a system variable with the strange name ⎕ct to which a user could assign a value. The comparison was more complicated than just the absolute difference; it was relative to the larger absolute value of the two comparands (if not exactly equal as rational numbers).  --Lambiam 21:37, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

I actually don't agree with the claim that numbers represented in numerical form...are rational numbers. If you're talking about the main use for them, namely representing physical quantities, they aren't rational numbers, not conceptually anyway. Conceptually they're "fuzzy real numbers". They don't represent any exact value, rational or otherwise, but rather a position along the real line known with some uncertainty. --Trovatore (talk) 22:36, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

(Taking the above comments as read:) Most of the significant issues with floating point numbers are programming errors, often slightly subtle ones. It is possible in the majority of cases to use rational numbers as an alternative, only producing a floating point representation when display or output is needed in that form. Again for the majority of cases this would be a good solution, but for a very few cases the numerator and denominator could be very large (the logistic map example above would require ~ 2^62 digits (cancelling helps but a little)), and for compute intensive cases the general slowdown could be important. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 12:00, 6 November 2024 (UTC).

It's conceptually wrong, though, in most cases. Floating-point numbers usually represent physical quantities, and physical quantities aren't conceptually rational numbers. What we want is something that approximates our state of knowledge about a real-valued quantity, and floating point is the closest thing we have to that in wide use. (Interval arithmetic would be a *little* closer but it's a pain.)

That doesn't actually prove that you couldn't get good solutions with rationals, but it's kind of an article of software-engineering faith that things work best when your data structures align with your concepts. I don't know if that's ever been put to a controlled test. --Trovatore (talk) 18:25, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Sure you are absolutely right for representing physical quantities in most cases - in chaotic scenarios whatever accuracy you measure with might not be enough regardless of the way you calculate. However computing is used for many purposes including mathematics. It's also used in ways where careful application of floating point will bring an acceptable answer, but naive application won't. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 23:03, 6 November 2024 (UTC).

Incidentally here's a perl program that gets a more accurate answer to the logistic map problem above, using floating point:

use Math::BigFloat;
my $x = Math::BigFloat->new('0.1');
$x->accuracy(50);  # Set desired precision
for (my $i = 0; $i < 62; $i++) {
    $x = 4 * $x * (1 - $x);
}
print "$x\n";

All the best: Rich Farmbrough 23:07, 6 November 2024 (UTC).

I guess you meant "...using arbitrary precision floating point" (i.e. perl's "BigFloat" package).

But this ends up being a nice illustration of another principle of numerical programming, namely the importance of using excess precision for intermediate results. Evidently that call to accuracy(50) sets not only the final printout precision, but also the maximum precision carried through the calculations. So although it prints 50 digits, only 32 of them are correct, with the rest lost due to accumulated roundoff error along the way. (The perl program prints 0.25641253547021802388934423187010674334774769183115, but I believe the correct answer to 50 digits — at least, according to my own, homebrew multiprecision calculator — is 0.25641253547021802388934423187010494728798714960746.) —scs (talk) 04:02, 7 November 2024 (UTC), edited 13:45, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

My original question was about how to describe the imperfections, not what the imperfections are or where they come from. But since someone brought up rational numbers, my own take is that there are several models you might imagine using for how computer floating point works:

• rational numbers
• decimal fractions
• scientific notation
• real numbers

Now, although real numbers are arguably what floating-point numbers are the farthest from — there are an uncountably infinite number of real numbers, but "only" 18,437,736,874,454,810,626 floating-point ones — it's the real numbers that floating-point at least tries to approximate. The approximation is supremely imperfect — both the range and the precision are strictly limited — but if you imagine that floating-point numbers are approximate, limited-precision renditions of certain real numbers, you won't go too far wrong. (As for the rationals, it's not strictly wrong to say that "floating point numbers are rational numbers", because the floating point numbers are indeed a proper subset of the rational numbers — but I don't think it's a useful model.) —scs (talk) 13:35, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Actually, it is "strictly wrong to say that 'floating point numbers are rational numbers'". At least there is no injective ring homomorphism from the floats into the rationals, because the arithmetic is different. Of course the floats aren't literally a ring in the first place, but you can work out what I mean. --Trovatore (talk) 19:35, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

November 5

Monitor Is Dark

I have a Dell desktop computer running Windows 11 with a full-screen monitor. Early this afternoon, it was displaying the screen to prompt me to enter my passnumber, which I entered, and then the screen went dark. The computer itself is still functioning. I have shared some of its folders, and I can see them as shared drives on my laptop computer. My question is what I should try short of replacing the monitor. I haven't priced monitors yet, but I know that they cost between $100 and $200, and I am willing to spend that if necessary, but would of course rather spend on something else. I tried unplugging the monitor from the UPS and plugging it back in. Is there anything that can be inferred from the fact that the monitor turned off while it was logging me on? Is there anything in particular that I should try? Robert McClenon (talk) 00:42, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Please disregard this question. I disconnected the monitor power cord from both the monitor and the power supply. Then I plugged it back into a different socket of the power supply, and back into the monitor, and the display is fine again. I don't know whether a connection had been loose or whether the socket in the power supply failed, more likely the former, but I will just leave it alone now that it is working. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:14, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

I am running Windows 11 and the same thing happened to me a few hours ago. I have three monitors. All went black. The computer was still on and running, but no display except for the mouse. It took me a bit to realize that as I moved the mouse, a gray pixel moved around the screens. I forced a shutdown on the computer by long-holding the power button, turned it back on, and all three monitors started working again. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 17:15, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

That was a different problem. That sounds like a failure in Windows 11. My problem turned out to be a hardware problem. I am satisfied that I solved my problem and that you solved yours. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:01, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

November 6

Turning Off Ad Blocker

Sometimes when I am viewing a news web site, there is a message asking me to turn off my ad blocker. I have not deliberately enabled an ad blocker, so I assume that something, maybe Norton, is blocking ads. If I am using Firefox, how do I determine what ad blocker is in use, so that I can turn it off if I want to view a page that doesn't like ad blockers? If I am using Chrome, how do I determine what ad blocker is in use, so that I can turn the ad blocker off? I have found that if I really want to bypass the ad blocker, I can use Opera, which is a less commonly used web browser, so that common security software doesn't mess with it, but I would like to be able to turn off the ad blocker if the web site tells me to turn off the ad blocker.

This is sort of an electronic arms race, with electronic counter-measures, and electronic counter-counter-measures. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:11, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

@Robert McClenon: I believe it potentially could be the tracker blocking from Firefox itself. I'm not sure whether there's an easy way to see what's blocking the adverts as it could potentially be down at network level. I suspect it's Firefox blocking trackers as occasionally when I use a browser that blocks trackers, I do get ad blocker disable notices. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 13:14, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Robert McClenon: using Firefox, I had a similar problem with YouTube, and learned that not only Adguard Adblocker and uBlock origin needed to be turned off for YouTube to work, but that Malwarebytes had also acquired an ad-blocking aspect and also needed to be turned off.

On Firefox, you may be able to click a jigsaw-piece icon at top right, labelled 'Extensions' and see what you currently have turned on and off. Hope this helps. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 21:52, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Intermittent but predictable IP connectivity

Context: I had an interesting issue, which I would like to know the technical cause of, partly out of curiosity, and partly so that I can have a more elegant fix should it recur. I resolved the issue by restarting my laptop (restarting the router didn't work and other devices did not have the problem).

My laptop had been working fine for a week or so on a new fibre connection, using the same router that we have had for several years. I went out and used my phone as a hotspot for my laptop. Came home, with hotspot turned off the to discover very intermittent Internet access.

The lap top was connected for 3 minutes, disconnected for 1 minute. I ran ping -t from command line to the gateway and logged the results. Ping -t should run once per second. I got between 177 and 179 successful pings, followed by 60-63 unsuccessful pings. I believe the slight variance from 180/60 was due to the reset happening in a lower level of the stack, so losing a little time while higher level connections were established (of course I'd expect the counts to vary by 1 or 2 simply because of the coarse resolution).

Hypotheses welcome, they should explain the 3 minute and 1 minute time spans.

Note: I found a Reddit post where someone had connectivity in "2-3 minute" chunks , but the answers weren't particularly informative.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough 11:45, 6 November 2024 (UTC).

@Rich Farmbrough:, Hi Rich, are you still experiencing this anomaly (and if not, how did you fix it), or would you like some troubleshooting suggestions? Cheers, :>MinorProphet (talk) 17:03, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

It hasn't recurred. As I remarked I restarted my laptop. If it recurs I might try some command line stuff. Thanks for the kind offer. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 20:28, 10 November 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". [2]

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^[3] (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)

Yes, but if you integrate over a zero time span, the result is zero. If you integrate over a non-zero time span, the object is not at rest during that time. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:17, 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)

Lambiam, what if the object is a building of known dimensions? If you can see 3 corners couldn't you solve for the relative position of the camera? Or do you need 4 points? fiveby(zero) 04:32, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

In general, we have a projective transformation that projects a 3D point $(x,y,z)$ in real space to a 2D point $(\xi ,\eta )$ on the film by a transformation of the form

$\xi ={\frac {d+ex+fy+gz}{1+ax+by+cz}},~~\eta ={\frac {h+ix+jy+kz}{1+ax+by+cz}}.$

Let $y$ denote the vertical coordinate in the 3D space and $\xi$ the horizontal coordinate on the film. Then, assuming the camera is not tilted, the value of $\xi$ is invariant under changes of $y$ while $x$ and $z$ remain constant, which implies that $f=b=0.$ Let furthermore $x$ denote the horizontal coordinate parallel to the film in the camera. Then the value of $\eta$ is invariant under changes of $x$ while $y$ and $z$ remain constant, which implies that $i=a=0.$ Every point in the straight line of sight from the camera, as well as in the vertical plane through that line, has the same value for $x$, and its image on the film is on a vertical line with constant $\xi .$ We can set both equal to $0,$ which implies that $d=g=0.$ The third 3D coordinate $z$ denotes the horizontal coordinate in the direction of sight of the camera. We can set $\eta =0$ for the height of the horizon on the film. This means that $\eta \to 0$ as $z\to \infty ,$ which implies $k=0.$ Finally, at a constant distance $z,$ real-world squares remain squares on the image, so we know that $e=j.$ A judicious choice of coordinates has led to the simpler projective transformation

$\xi ={\frac {ex}{1+cz}},~~\eta ={\frac {h+ey}{1+cz}}.$

Three unknown coefficients still remain: $c,e,h.$ Relating a real-world point with known coordinates $(x,y,z)$ to a point on the film with known coordinates $(\xi ,\eta )$ gives you two equations, so if my reasoning is correct, in general doing this for two points should suffice. It becomes more complicated if you don't know the coordinates of real-world points but only the distances between them.  --Lambiam 07:34, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Furthermore, putting

$\lambda ={\frac {e}{c}},~~z_{0}=-{\frac {1}{c}},y_{0}=-{\frac {h}{e}},$

we can rewrite the transformation as

$\xi =\lambda {\frac {x}{z-z_{0}}},~~\eta =\lambda {\frac {y-y_{0}}{z-z_{0}}}.$

Fixing the value of $y$ for the ground level as being zero, $y_{0}$ should be the eye height of the camera, which is presumably easily measured, eliminating one more unknown. This might suggest just one real-world point $(x,y,z)$ needs to be related to an image point $(\xi ,\eta ),$ but the equations you get are not independent, since, if the values of $\xi ,\eta$ and $y$ are known, the value of $x$ can be computed without measuring it, using $x={\frac {\xi (y-y_{0})}{\eta }}.$.  --Lambiam 12:18, 9 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)

Reading Subtractive color and Additive color might help. Klbrain (talk) 01:08, 11 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)

See Caustic (optics).  --Lambiam 09:37, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

The repeating black lines are an example of Newton's rings. They occur due to internal reflections in a thin wedge of fluid and are most apparent when the source light is monochromatic e.g. yellow sodium light. The article shows a more reliable way to view the rings using a thin convex lens than relying on chance raindrop spreading. Philvoids (talk) 10:49, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes, can confirm that this is what the lines looked like, although they were not as round as in the article's images. Thanks. ―Panamitsu (talk) 22:11, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

November 9

Black Body emissive power in medium

The black body emissive power in a medium $E_{m}$ is equal to the product of the square of its refractive index $n$ and the emissive power in vacuum $E_{v}$ with the formula:
$E_{m}=n^{2}E_{v}$.
What does this mean in terms of the energy emitted, respecting the principle of conservation of energy and in the case where the energy is emitted in a vacuum, then enters a medium with refractive index $n$? Malypaet (talk) 23:16, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

November 10

What is a pipehead dam?

I've seen various things described as a "pipehead dam" (common noun), as well as some specific instances of dams named "... Pipehead Dam", eg Serpentine Pipehead Dam, which is separate to Serpentine Dam. I gather from the text of Serpentine Pipehead Dam that a pipehead dam is a smaller dam fed from a larger dam, with the smaller (pipehead) dam then feeding water into the pipe into the water supply system - but I cannot find anything (including with a Google search) that specifically says that. Mitch Ames (talk) 01:03, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Wow! This was hard to hunt down. Deep in the results for probably the same set of searches you did, I finally found on page 77 of [https://sitecore9-cm-prod.watercorporation.com.au/-/media/WaterCorp/Documents/Our-Water/Regional-Water-Supplies/water-forever-south-west-final-report.pdf]: "Pipe-head dam — a diversion dam that takes streamflow

from the catchment to another dam for storage." --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 01:22, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

That definition appears to be the reverse of what the Serpentine articles say. The articles say water goes from main dam to pipehead dam, but the Water Corp definition suggest the water goes from pipehead to another (main?) dam. Mitch Ames (talk) 10:01, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

The point that might not necessarily come from the easy picking of the water authority or google online materials, is that in the history of the dams, the water can be moved either from the main dam to the pipehead, or vice versa - and in turn can also be distributed to other parts of the system, there is no one way only part of the system, maybe not easily found online but nevertheless the current water corp web space is very poor on the intracies of the dynamics of the water supply system. There could well be a range of security issues attached to the lack of information . JarrahTree 10:55, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

...for the over two centuries that pipe head dams have existed? --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 16:37, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

The higher the pitch of the instrument the longer the bow: why?

As everyone has probably noticed, the violin has a longer bow than the viola, which has a longer bow than the cello, which has a longer bow than the double-bass. Why? I'm guessing a given length of bow (irrespective of the instrument) takes the string through a given number of vibrations. Therefore to make the string vibrate for a given amount of time at a higher frequency requires more bow length. But is this correct? Another consequence would be that no matter what the instrument the bows make the string vibrate for roughly the same amount of time and that the violin requires a higher bow speed than the viola which requires a higher bow speed than the cello which requires a higher bow speed than the double bass. Again, is this correct? 178.51.16.158 (talk) 08:15, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

To make the string vibrate with a nice sound, there has to be sufficient (but not too much) friction between the bow and the string, which requires the bow to move at the same speed or just slightly faster than the top speed of the vibrating string, 2π times the product of amplitude and frequency. So higher frequencies at a given level of dynamics require a higher bow speed.  --Lambiam 09:17, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

(Only) slightly pertinent to this query, you might be amused by Kingsley Amis's 1971 novel Girl, 20, in which a would-be avant guard classical composer and violinist performs a controversial concert with rock musicians (an actual thing at the time, see for example Concerto for Group and Orchestra). Someone has secretly greased both his violin bows, but he impresses with his technical skills (though not with his actual music) by borrowing and using a double-bass bow. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.7.95.48 (talk) 17:54, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

October 29

If the white amazon (QN) in Maharajah and the Sepoys is replaced by the fairy chess pieces, does black still have a winning strategy? Or white have a winning strategy? Or draw?

If the white amazon (QN) in Maharajah and the Sepoys is replaced by the fairy chess pieces, does black still have a winning strategy? Or white have a winning strategy? Or draw?

1. QNN (amazon rider in pocket mutation chess, elephant in wolf chess)
2. QNC (combine of queen and wildebeest in wildebeest chess)
3. QNNCC (combine of queen and “wildebeest rider”)
4. QNAD (combine of queen and squirrel)
5. QNNAD (combine of amazon rider and squirrel)
6. QNNAADD (combine of queen and “squirrel rider”)

218.187.64.154 (talk) 17:38, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Another question: If use wildebeest chess to play Maharajah and the Sepoys, i.e. on a 11×10 board, black has a full, wildebeest chess pieces in the position of the wildebeest chess, white only has one piece, which can move as either a queen or as a wildebeest on White's turn, andthis piece can be placed in any square in rank 1 to rank 6 (cannot be placed in the squares in rank 7 or rank 8, since the squares in rank 7 or rank 8 may capture Black's pieces (exclude pawns) or be captured by Black's pieces (or pawns), especially e7, g7, e8, g8, which may capture Black's king). Black's goal is to checkmate the only one of White, while White's is to checkmate Black's king. There is no promotion. (Unlike wildebeest chess, stalemate is considered as a draw) Who has a winning strategy? Or this game will be draw by perfect play? 218.187.64.154 (talk) 17:31, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

November 4

Name of distance function

I have a distance function in my code. I know it has a name and a Wikipedia article (because I worked on the article), but I am old and the name of the function has skipped my mind. I'm trying to reverse search by using the formula to find the name of the function, but I can't figure out how to do it. So, what is the name of this distance function: d_ab = -lnΣ√a_ib_i. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 12:53, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

If $a=(0.6,0.8)$ and $b=(0.8,0.6),$ the value of this measure is about $-0.326\,.$ This does not make sense for an indication of distance.  --Lambiam 15:02, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

My brain finally turned back on and I remembered it is an implementation of Bhattacharyya distance. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 15:52, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Normally when you call something a distance function it has to obey the axioms of a metric space. Since Bhattacharyya distance applies only to probability distributions, the previous example would not be relevant. Still, the term "distance function" is used rather loosely since (according to the article) the Bhattacharyya distance does not obey the triangle inequality. The w:Category:Statistical distance has 38 entries, and I doubt many people are familiar with most of them. --RDBury (talk) 18:08, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

When I was in college in the 70s, terminology was more precise. Now, many words have lost meaning. Using the old, some would say "prehistoric" terminology, a function is something that maps or relates a single value to each unique input. If the input is the set X, the function gives you the set Y such that each value of X has a value in Y and if the same value exists more than once in X, you get the same Y for it each time. Distance functions produce unbounded values. Similarity and difference functions are bounded, usually 0 to 1 or -1 to 1. Distance is usually bounded on one end, such as 0, and unbounded on the other. You can always get more distant. The distance function mentioned here is bounded on one end, but not the other. It does not obey triangle inequality, as you noted, so it is not a metric. Distance functions have to obey that to be metrics. Then, we were constantly drilled with the difference between indexes and coefficients. This function should be an index from my cursory read-through because it is logarithmic. If you double the result, you don't have double the distance. I've seen all those definitions that used to be important fade away over the decades, so I expect that it doesn't truly matter what the function is called now. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 16:12, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

This could be a pretty good standup routine if you added some more material. You could call it "Hey you kids, get off my ln!" 100.36.106.199 (talk) 02:09, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

November 8

finding an equation to match data

An experiment with accurate instruments resulted in the following data points:-

x,     y
0.080, 0.323;
0.075, 0.332;
0.070, 0.347;
0.065, 0.368;
0.060, 0.395;
0.055, 0.430;
0.050, 0.472;
0.045, 0.523;
0.040, 0.587;
0.035, 0.665;
0.030, 0.758;
0.025, 0.885;
0.020, 1.047;
0.015, 1.277;
0.010, 1.760.

How can I obtain a formula that reasonably matches this data, say within 1 or 2 percent?
At first glance, it looks like a k1 + k2*x^-k3 relationship, or a k18x^k2 + k3*x^-k4 relationship, but they fail at x above 0.070. Trying a series such as e(k1 + k2x +k3x^2) is also no good. -- Dionne Court (talk) 03:14, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Thank you CiaPan for fixing the formatting. Dionne Court (talk) 15:12, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Plotting 1/y against x it looks like a straight line, except there is a rather dramatic hook to the side starting around x=.075. This leads me to suspect that the last two entries are off for some reason; either those measurements are off or there's some systematic change in the process going on for large x. Part of the problem is that you're not giving us any information about where this information is coming from. I've heard it said, "Never trust data without error bars." In other words, how accurate is accurate, and might the accuracy change depending on the input? Is there a reason that the values at x≥.075 might be larger than expected. If the answer to the second is "Yes" then perhaps a term of the form (a-x)^k should be added. If the answer is "No" then perhaps that kind of term should not be added since that adds more parameters to the formula. You can reproduce any set of data given enough parameters in your model, but too many parameters leads to Overfitting, which leads to inaccurate results when the input is not one of the values in the data. So as a mathematician I could produce a formula that reproduces the data, but as a data analyst I'd say you need to get more data points, especially in the x≥.075 region, to see if there's something real going on there or if it's just a random fluke affecting a couple data points. --RDBury (talk) 15:58, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

PS. I tried fitting 1/y to a polynomial of degree four, so a model with 5 parameters. Given there are only 15 data points, I think 5 parameters is stretching it in terms of overfitting, but when I compared the data with a linear approximation there was a definite W shaped wobble, which to me says degree 4. (U -- Degree 2, S -- Degree 3, W -- Degree 4.) As a rough first pass I got

1/y ≃ 0.1052890625+54.941265625x-965.046875x²+20247.5x³-136500x⁴

with an absolute error of less than .01. The methods I'm using aren't too efficient, and there should be canned curve fitting programs out there which will give a better result, but I think this is enough to justify saying that I could produce a formula that reproduces the data. I didn't want to go too much farther without knowing what you want to optimize, relative vs. absolute error, least squares vs. min-max for example. There are different methods depending the goal, and there is a whole science (or perhaps it's an art) of Curve fitting which would impractical to go into here. --RDBury (talk) 18:26, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Thak you for your lengthy reply.

I consider it unlikely that the data inflexion for x>0.07 is an experimental error. Additional data points are :-

x, y: 0.0775, 0.326; 0.0725, 0.339.

The measurement was done with digital multimeters and transducer error should not exceed 1% of value. Unfortunately the equipment available cannot go above x=0.080. I only wish it could. Choosing a mathematic model that stays within 1 or 2 percent of each value is appropriate.

As you say, one can always fit a curve with an A + Bx + Cx^2 + Dx^3 .... to any given data. But to me this is a cop-out, and tells me nothing about what the internal process might be, and so extrapolation is exceedingly risky. Usually, a more specific solution when discovered requires fewer terms. ```` Dionne Court (talk) 01:49, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

When I included the additional data points, the value at .0725 was a bit of an outlier, exceeding the .01 absolute error compared to the estimate, but not by much. --RDBury (talk) 18:55, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

FWIW, quite a few more data points would almost certainly yield a better approximation. This cubic equation seems pretty well-behaved:

$-8549.55x^{3}+1550.8x^{2}-96.9307x+2.49283$ Earl of Arundel (talk) 02:28, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Some questions about the nature of the data. Some physical quantities are necessarily nonnegative, such as the mass of an object. Others can also be negative, for example a voltage difference. Is something known about the theoretically possible value ranges of these two variables? Assuming that x is a controlled value and y is an experimentally observed result, can something be said about the theoretically expected effect on y as x approaches the limits of its theoretical range?  --Lambiam 15:59, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

As x approaches zero, y must approach infinity.

x must line between zero and some value less than unity.

If you plot the curve with a log y scale, by inspection it seems likely that y cannot go below about 0.3 but I have no theoretical basis for proving that.

However I can say that y cannot ever be negative.

The idea here is to find/work out/discover a mathematically simple formula for y as a function of x to use as a clue as to what the process is. That's why a series expansion that does fit the data if enough terms are used doesn't help.Dionne Court (talk) 01:33, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

So as x approaches zero, 1/y must also approach zero. This is so to speak another data point. Apart from the fact that the power series approximations given above provide no theoretical suggestions, they also have a constant term quite distinct from 0, meaning they do not offer a good approximation for small values of x.

If you plot a graph of x versus 1/y, a smooth curve through the points has two points of inflection. This suggests (to me) that there are several competing processes at play.  --Lambiam 08:08, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

The x=0, 1/y=0 is an important data point that should have been included from the start. I'd say it's the most important data point since a) it's at the endpoint of the domain, and b) it's the only data point there the values are exact. Further theoretical information near x=0 would be helpful as well. For example do we know whether is y is proportional to x^-a near x=0 for a specific a, or perhaps - log x? If there is no theoretical basis for determining this then I think more data points near x=0, a lot more, would be very helpful. The two points of inflection match the W (or M) shape I mentioned above. And I agree that it indicates there are several interacting processes at work here. I'm reminded of solubility curves for salts in water. There is an interplay between energy and ionic and Van der Waals forces going on, and a simple power law isn't going to describe these curves. You can't even assume that they are smooth curves since Sodium sulfate is an exception; its curve has an abrupt change of slope at 32.384 °C. In general, nature is complex, simple formulas are not always forthcoming, and even when they are they often only apply to a limited range of values. --RDBury (talk) 15:46, 10 November 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? [4], [5] --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, [6], 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 [7]. —Amble (talk) 03:33, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

It's easy to forget the pioneers of this type of endurance, so I randomly commend to you Helen Richey, who flew a Curtiss Thrush (named "Outdoor Girl" after a brand of cosmetics) with Frances Marsalis for 237 hours and 42 mins in December 1933 over Miami, Florida. The refuelling was achieved by opening the central hatch, grabbing a dangling hose out of a Curtiss Robin and shoving it into the gas tank, which Richey likened to "wrestling with a cobra in a hurricane." Later edits to this article may have been made in error, I'm currently attempting to resolve them. MinorProphet (talk) 20:23, 10 November 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.[8] ←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)

Cool story, bro. No evidence adduced. Let me tell you a story in a similar vein, likewise without evidence: Reagan's rise was ultimately a corrective to the massive statism of Lyndon Johnson, whose policies led to the malaise of the Carter years. The one who actually started the correction, in an interesting irony of fate, was Carter, not Reagan.

But Carter was burdened by what had been, in his party. The time was not ripe for center-left parties to take credit for free-market policies; that would have to wait for the Clinton—Blair years of dear memory.

So Reagan got the credit (not entirely undeserved) for the resulting boom in the 1980s.

We do not in fact "know 40 years on that Reagan was wrong". Oh, he was wrong about many things. But not about his liberal economics; that was fine. It was picked up by perhaps the second-best president of my lifetime, Bill Clinton, whom the GOP of the time insisted of making an enemy of for some reason. --Trovatore (talk) 05:40, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

You’re essentially correct about Carter; that is a well known and oft-repeated anecdote. But Clinton signed NAFTA and supported globalization and promoted neoliberalism which was not beneficial to most people in the US and elsewhere. You appear to be about two decades behind in your analysis. Viriditas (talk) 19:21, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Clinton signed NAFTA, which was good, and promoted neoliberalism, which was also good. --Trovatore (talk) 19:25, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Branko Milanović: "Why is a neoliberal ruler worse than the “all-encompassing-interest” despot? Precisely because he lacks the all-encompassing interest in his polity as he does not see himself as being part of it; rather he is the owner of a giant company called in this case the United States of America where he decides who should do what. People complain that Trump, in this crisis, is lacking the most elementary human compassion. But while they are right in diagnosis, they are wrong in understanding the origin of the lack of compassion. Like any rich owner he does not see that his role is to show compassion to his hired hands, but to decide what they should do, and even when the occasion presents itself, to squeeze them out of their pay, make them work harder or dismiss them without a benefit. In doing so to his putative countrymen he is just applying to an area called “politics” the principles that he has learned and used for many years in business. Trump is the best student of neoliberalism because he applies its principles without concealment."

Popular dissatisfaction with the effects of neoliberalism is how we got Trump, and in return, we get more. Nice feedback loop. Viriditas (talk) 19:40, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Neoliberalism is precisely not the guy at the top deciding who will do what. It's letting people choose how they order their economic lives on their own. And Trump is very far removed from it. --Trovatore (talk) 19:44, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

I couldn't disagree more. Trump is the very embodiment of neoliberalism, its end result, as it were. Viriditas (talk) 19:56, 9 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⁾".^[9] 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 Battles of Khalkhin Gol were a major Soviet-Japanese conflict over Mongolia. And the author of File:Caricature for Riga Peace 1921.png would probably dispute with you about force being used to establish Soviet control of Belarus. AnonMoos (talk) 20:10, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Does any of this qualify as "an open war between the two bordering countries"? I still see no evidence of a war between Russia and Mongolia on the current border, between Russia and Belarus, between Russia and USA (on the Far Eastern border), between Russia and Lithuania on their current border, etc. In other words, the article's statement is fake. Ghirla^-трёп- 00:43, 10 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)

Your comment is a reply to mine but it suggests that you didn't read the paper I linked. ~Anachronist (talk) 19:32, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

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

So, this topic has been an interest of mine for about 25 years, or at least since Gore lost the election to Bush. I've gone back and forth, sometimes agreeing with it, and other times disagreeing with it. Weighing all the available evidence, I am forced to conclude that this observation is probably not supported all that much. The real turning point for me was seeing how easily pandemic misinformation spread in liberal communities formerly associated with democrats, and the simple truth is that we all know gullible liberals who believe in crystal nonsense. So to conclude, this is not a problem endemic to conservatives, as much as I would like to personally believe it is. It's a problem unique to all of humanity. Think about it. Reagan won by a similar landslide in 1980, and you had millions of liberals who got suckered into his morning in America nonsense. Viriditas (talk) 09:50, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes, gullibility is not a problem endemic to conservatives or democrats. This is a problem endemic to some people across the political spectrum.

I think studying how misinformation about COVID-19 vaccination contributes to people’s refusal of vaccination is a potential research topic. Finding the percentage of people who refused vaccination because of misinformation across different positions on the political spectrum will help us understand what kind of people are more gullible to misinformation. Stanleykswong (talk) 12:12, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I saw articles referring to it as a "Republican" disease, because more Republicans were dying from it than Democrats, Republicans were least likely to be vaccinated, and most likely to buy into the nonsense (which Trump helped promote) about "safer" alternatives and the conspiracies behind the vaccine. ~Anachronist (talk) 19:31, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

That's all true, but I think the reason was because conservatives have highly sophisticated information distribution networks, whereas Democrats have almost none except for mainstream media which tends to lean center to center right. And yes, more conservatives in red states died due to this disinformation network. But there was still a huge problem with liberal communities accepting and promulgating COVID-19 misinformation, and this was an active area of research when it came to a phenomenon known as conspirituality, liberal to left-wing communities that were targeted with right-wing propaganda. The number of articles describing this controversy in yoga communities, for example, is well worth the read. It's a fascinating subject that illustrates how disinformation and propaganda can infect any community. Here on Maui, we saw this happen in real time after the wildfires in 2023. The entire population of Hawaii was targeted by foreign state actors with disinformation accusing liberals and Democrats of "attacking" Maui to push Hawaiians out of their homes and promote green cities.[10] This disinformation was then intentionally echoed at the highest levels of the GOP, reinforcing the message that natural disasters are caused by liberals. Keep in mind, this is not a new thing. The GOP had been doing this for decades, often blaming devastating tornadoes on homosexuality and abortion.[11] When Tucker Carlson returned from his trip to Russia, he began using the same old playbook, blaming powerful US hurricanes on abortion, not climate change.[12] The thing that was different about the Hawaii wildfires, is that propaganda researchers traced much of the messaging to Chinese and Russian sites, who appeared to be working closely with members of the GOP in congress to coordinate their talking points. The idea that autocrats and authoritarians, particularly those who are part of BRIC countries, have infiltrated the Republican Party through Trump, the NRA,[13] and members of the larger Koch network and associated religious groups such as the Council for National Policy, is no longer a conspiracy theory, but well established. The US is just months away from dismantling NATO and becoming closer allies with Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China. If you tell conservatives this, they often have a response: "I'd rather be a Russian than a Democrat."[14] Viriditas (talk) 23:49, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

I don’t know the research method the article was using, but without a sound research method, for example using education, religion and gender as control variables, the term "Republican" disease may not be a fair statement. A proper study with valid and reliable findings needs to minimize biases and errors. It is likely that other factors, such as education, religion and gender make them more susceptible to misinformation and have a high chance to die of COVID-19. So a study to find out the influence of political spectrum on susceptibility to misinformation needs to “control” those factors. Stanleykswong (talk) 11:10, 10 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.[15] 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)

A film about the 1957–1959 hearings of the McClellan Committee shows the testifying witnesses sitting at a separate witness table, facing a large oval table at which the committee members are seated on one side. At the Fulbright hearings of 1966, a clip such as that of the testimony of General James Gavin show the witness likewise seated at a separate table, facing a semicircular structure behind which the committee members are seated, with Fulbright in the middle.  --Lambiam 20:54, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

November 10

Leg Day

In anything American, I keep coming across "Leg Day". There is no article on it so what is it? Is it just a fancy name for exercise? Is it a sports day? Difficultly north (talk) Time, department skies 16:57, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

My understanding is that it's a term from weight training. Many people let muscle groups rest for a day or so after training them, before doing it again. Some people who want to do weights more than every other day might set up a cycle where they do, say, an upper-body workout one day, then lower-body the next day, and the latter would be leg day.

I am not saying this is a good idea or a bad idea; this is just my understanding of what it means.

The article that would most naturally cover such a plan, at a quick look, would be sports periodization, but I do not see it covered there. --Trovatore (talk) 17:20, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

As someone who has a lot of gym-faring friends, I can confirm that it's exactly this. It's a day for focusing specifically on leg exercises. GalacticShoe (talk) 18:50, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Could someone please create an article on it? Difficultly north (talk) Time, department skies 21:33, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

I think the best course would to have it redirect to split weight training. GalacticShoe (talk) 21:36, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

I think you're missing the joke. The reason "leg day" has currency is because it's mostly used as a joke to poke fun at people who forget to do their legs when they are seeing so much results in their upper body. So a lot of times you see people with massive arms and bulging chests, but little stick legs. I don't think we need a separate article on the joke, but something should be said about "skipping leg day" in the primary topic articles. Viriditas (talk) 21:48, 10 November 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.[16] 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)

Reminds me of that Flight of the Conchords episode, where the band gets an Australian manager (or similar), and they begin to worry about whether she's subtly mocking their accents. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:22, 8 November 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)

And in (American) medical contexts I often hear "milligrams per kilogram" pronounced "migs per kig". —Tamfang (talk) 21:04, 10 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)

She-cats are queens in some contexts, I believe. —Tamfang (talk) 21:08, 10 November 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)

Just like animal collective nouns? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:24, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't see where that makes the distinction. — kwami (talk) 23:27, 8 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)

Managed to make a recording of "Ophtalmino vessevussi" and "e! igignete!" here. Thank all! OP 2A0D:6FC0:E95:CA00:4054:7CE6:A04D:4932 (talk) 19:42, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

I hear "[i ofθalmi mu pesevusi]", i.e. "οι οφθαλμοί μου [πεσσ?]εύουσι" – "my eyes are [...?]ing" - the words for "my eyes" are very clear and the ending must be that of 3rd person plural present indicative verb, but I'm not sure what that verb is – there is a verb "πεσσεύω", meaning "to play at draughts", but that doesn't seem to make much sense. In the second phrase, I hear "[e, ti jirnete]", which would be "ε, τί γυρνετε" (or "γυρνεται", or "γείρνετε" or "γείρνεται") – again, I'm not sure what exact verb form this is supposed to be. Note that all of this is (pseudo-?)Ancient Greek as pronounced by a Modern Greek speaker (as is customary in Greece); the speaker sounds like a native Greek speaker. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:48, 9 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 as 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)

24h time is common (but not universal) in French, in my experience. —Tamfang (talk) 21:11, 10 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 [17]. 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)

Yeah I think you're overcomplicating things here. You cannot have an emergency exit that reads "This exit is only an emergency exit", it's just ridiculous. --Viennese Waltz 06:51, 8 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)

With accents and breathing: ὕδωρ ζωῆς. The term occurs in Revelation 22:17.^[18] With the (neuter) definite article, it becomes τὸ ὕδωρ.  --Lambiam 09:59, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, all of you! 45.140.183.21 (talk) 13:00, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

November 9

Russian sectors?

I'm struggling a bit of how to differentiate 2 Russian words in English. In 1865 St Petersburg was divided into 12 часть (alt. полицейский часть), which were then further divided into 56 участок. What would be a good translation here for these two terms? Google gives quite similar meanings. I want to avoid the translation 'District', since it will create a confusion with the later raion term. I was thinking of 'police precinct', but google has that for 'полицейский участок'. Sector, division, section? -- Soman (talk) 11:33, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

For example, see here https://books.google.at/books?id=LW9GAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PT73 --Soman (talk) 11:37, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Possible terms are borough and ward. See also List of terms for administrative divisions.  --Lambiam 19:38, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

November 10

the χ from nowhere

Manichaeism is named for Mani. Where did the ch come from? —Tamfang (talk) 21:01, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

The German and Greek Wikipedia articles on Mani report that there was an ancient Greek alternate name Μανιχαῖος, which they both claim (unfortunately without sourcing) came from Syrian "Mānī ḥayyā", 'the living Mani'. Our English article instead hints at two different possible derivations, but those don't sound very confidence-inspiring. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:31, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

The OED speaks of the name Mani being "Hellenized to Μάνης, a common name for slaves, and to Μανιχαῖος, allegedly (as recorded by St Augustine) to avoid the resemblance between Mani and μανία mania n.". --Antiquary (talk) 21:47, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

October 27

Johnny Bananas season of the nickname

What was the first season of The Challenge that Johnny Devenanzio was referred to as Johnny Bananas? (78.18.160.168 (talk) 00:38, 27 October 2024 (UTC))

Devenanzio earned the nickname "Johnny Bananas" during his time in college at Penn State. Because of his crazy antics at PSU, friends and classmates would often comment that his pranks were "bananas" and the nickname stuck. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 18:26, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Ok so this was before his first season of The Challenge? (78.18.160.168 (talk) 01:18, 1 November 2024 (UTC))

First attestation of octave equivalence in the use of letters A to G as notes of music?

What's the first attestation of |A, B, C, D, E, F, G, a, b, c, d, e, f, g, aa, bb, cc, dd, ee, ff, gg| as notes of music (or any other system based on the letters A to G that assumes octave equivalence)? What's the first attestation of the low Γ (Gamma) added below the low A? What's the first attestation of the round b and round bb (minuscules; no round capital B) to refer to B flat in the middle and high octaves? (No B flat and so no round capital B in the low octave, at least in the Guidonian system, since there cannot be a solmization hexachord that contains it, but other theorists possibly did accept a low B flat).

Boethius mentioned in Letter notation does not assume octave equivalence. His notation uses A to P for a two octaves system, the first octave (starting at our note A) being: |A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H| and the second octave being: |H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P|. (There was no letter J yet). Our note A is notated A or H or P depending on the octave. So Boethius is not the answer to my query.

178.51.16.158 (talk) 18:59, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

The American Cyclopaedia (1883) calls it "St. Gregory's Notation", "that of Pope Gregory in the 6th century".^[19] A Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1895) confusingly states that this system was formed "[b]efore the 6th century, certainly during the time of Gregory the Great".^[20] (Pope Gregory I's reign was from 590 to 604.) However, The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Music (2011) dismisses this claim, stating there is "no direct evidence of chant notation until around the middle of the ninth century".^[21]  --Lambiam 06:36, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

See Helmholtz pitch notation? --136.56.165.118 (talk) 13:53, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Dialogus de musica (c. 11th c.) is a music treatise formerly attributed to Odo of Arezzo. The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory (2002) describes innovations in letter notation introduced in this treatise, referring to its author as "Pseudo-Odo", as follows:

Pseudo-Odo names these notes (except for gamma) with the same octave-based series of Latin letters that we still use today (A—G). He also introduces two graphic conventions that remained in use well beyond the end of the Middle Ages: the use of capital, lower-case, and doubled lowercase letters to differentiate octave related notes (A—G, a—g, aa); and the use of two forms of the letter “b” for the two pitches available as alternative forms of the “ninth step”: the “square b” (b quadratum), written ♮ as the symbol for “hard b” (b durum), our “b-natural,” and “round b” (b rotundum), written ♭ as the symbol for “soft b” (b molle), our “b-flat.” (The modern symbols for “flat,” “natural,” and “sharp” derive from these.) See Table 11.7. Guido keeps all of this, and adds four more notes above aa, notated as ♭♭/♮♮ cc, and dd. The note ee was later added to complete a hexachord on g (see below).^[22]

Historically, it would be better to refer to the letters as majuscules and minuscules, as this predates the adoption of bicameral script [added 12:50, 30 October 2024 (UTC): and movable type].  --Lambiam 17:53, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree. Or "capitals" and "minuscules". (Possibly the term "capital" is only used in the context of a bicameral script?)

Does the Cambridge History of Western Music Theory say whether pseudo-Odo accepted the low B flat?

Like I noted above Guido did not. There's a funny passage in his Epistle to monk Michel (Epistola ad Michelem) where if I remember correctly he goes (more or less, I'm obviously paraphrasing): "A low B flat? Are you nuts? What next? An F sharp?" Incidentally my mention of ff and gg above is in practice erroneous. The notation can express those notes, but in the Guidonian system they cannot exist for the same reason that the low B flat cannot exist: there is no (complete) hexachord that contains them: to get an ff and gg you would have to have a hexachord placed on cc but the 'la' of that hexachord would be a super-high A: aaa that's outside the system, which would make that hexachord incomplete. So, in practice, for him the highest note is the ee which is the 'la' of the hexachord placed on g. For some reason Guido only accepted complete hexachords. Similarly a low B flat could exist if Guido had only accepted a hexachord placed on a super-low F below the Γ but such a note is again outside the system, which would make that hexachord incomplete and Guido won't have it. 178.51.16.158 (talk) 05:19, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

I forget to add a link to the cited passage, now inserted. Immediately following it is this table of the scale of Pseudo-Odo's Dialogus:

“Step:”

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

Γ

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

a

♭

♮

c

d

e

f

g

aa

t

t

s

t

t

s

t

t

s

s

t

t

s

t

t

There is only one B, a tone up from A and a semitone down from C.  --Lambiam 18:21, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

October 31

Parody song?

I believe this (warning: slightly risqué content) re-uses the tune from another song. Does anyone recognise it? Thanks. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:F42E (talk) 17:11, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't really borrow the tune, but the start obviously references Lola by The Kinks. Matt Deres (talk) 12:48, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

November 1

Movie in anthology series

Back in 1984, when I was 13 years old, my teacher showed me and my class a movie about the Mayflower. One of the performers in it was John Dehner. I asked the teacher when the movie was made, in the 1960s or the 1970s. She told me she believed it was the 1960s, and she'll check the copyright. But during some commercial breaks, there was this image of some popcorn with a scoop. The caption read Sunday Playhouse. What's the movie's title? When was it made? Was there ever an anthology series called Sunday Playhouse? Anyone know?2603:7000:8641:810E:AFB5:A06F:298:5D33 (talk) 07:43, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Could it be Plymouth Adventure? 68.187.174.155 (talk) 11:08, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Since John Dehner is in its cast, that's probably the one. Does the OP concur? {The poster formerly known as 76.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 19:09, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's the one.2603:7000:8641:810E:AFB5:A06F:298:5D33 (talk) 02:51, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Sunday Playhouse seems to have been a tv slot for showing movies in the early 1960s [23]. A couple of other possibilities:

• The Pilgrims (1955) "This classroom film dramatizes the Pilgrim’s flight from religious persecution in England to the Netherlands, then 12 years later their ocean voyage on the Mayflower, and the founding of Plymouth Colony in 1620".
• The Beginning at Plymouth Colony (1954) "This Cold War classroom lecture film argues that the Pilgrims' early collectivist economic system failed, leading to a more successful capitalist system based on individual responsibility and private ownership".

Alansplodge (talk) 14:26, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Sunday Playhouse must've started airing sometime in the 1970s.2603:7000:8641:810E:AFB5:A06F:298:5D33 (talk) 02:59, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Yet the collected volume of TV Guide Vol. 9 Issues 1–13 linked by Alansplodge is dated as published in 1961, which is consistent with the magazine itself having started publication in 1953. Evidently then, films were being broadcast under the Sunday Playhouse title around 1960. Obviously, these were not new made-for-TV movies (which was I suspect not yet much of a thing), but TV showings of existing movies, Plymouth Adventure, for example, having been released in 1952. Sunday Playhouse broadcasts were doubtless repeated in subsequent years. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 14:48, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Really. I also still remember the music score from the Sunday Playhouse commercial breaks. It must've been from a popular song. If so, could the song be identified? In addition, could someone create an article about Sunday Playhouse?2603:7000:8641:810E:AFB5:A06F:298:5D33 (talk) 07:19, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Frauenliebe und -leben

Resolved

Has any male singer recorded Schumann's cycle? I know Matthias Goerne has performed it, but can't find any recording.

(After all, the premiere was given by baritone Julius Stockhausen with Clara Schumann accompanying...) Double sharp (talk) 15:27, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Classical label Hyperion does not suggest it might have been recorded [24]. It's a work absolutely neutraly qualified one Singstimme but the particular occurrence allows the reviewer to offer extended hinsight into admitted procolary protocolary attitudes, unfortunately not addressing your point specifically if I'm reading him correctly. --Askedonty (talk) 14:02, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Askedonty, purely for interest, can you rephrase your second sentence, whose meaning escapes me? 'Procolary', for example, is so obscure that it does not appear in my OED, and although I have been able to get 'Singstimme' translated as 'singing voice', I cannot make sense of ". . .neutra[l]ly qualified one Singstimme . . .". {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 15:06, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Sorry. The German term Singstimme is the standard word for "voice" used in the composer's voice and instrumental prescription as it appears in the song cycle genre in German. --Askedonty (talk) 09:01, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, Askedonty. So you were saying that the work itself doesn't demand any particular type of (male or female) voice, but its unusual performance by a baritone allows the critic to discuss the conventional attitudes that expect a female singer? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 17:03, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

True, though I'm feeling quite dishearted now not having had enough perseverance for also being able to state that I was commenting only and perhaps even partially the introduction to a fully thorough presentation of the work, and the unconventional aspects in its genesis. --Askedonty (talk) 17:35, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Of course, recordings were a very newfangled invention in 1862 when the premiere was given. I mentioned the premiere not because I thought it might've been recorded (of course it wasn't), but rather to explain why using a male singer for this is not quite as odd an idea as it may seem. Double sharp (talk) 14:51, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

BTW, there is a recording on YouTube of the the second song alone by baritone Olivier Gagnon. I really enjoyed it, but still I haven't found the full cycle. Double sharp (talk) 11:49, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

This appears to be a recording of the full cycle by baritone Roderick Williams. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:31, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

@JackofOz: Thank you!! Double sharp (talk) 02:37, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

This reminds me of a most enlightening talk page discussion (mea culpa) about the name of Schumann's song-cycle back in 2017. The upshot of my research was that "The entirety of reliable editions of the Schumann cycle use the exact title of Frauenliebe und Leben including: Breitkopf und Härtel, Peters Edition urtext, Bärenreiter, Henle, Universal." So technically you should refer to it as Frauenliebe und Leben, 'cos that's the printed title of Schumann's setting and always has been, despite: the LP/CD covers of various recording companies; German orthographical reforms; the title of the original poems; and settings by other composers. Btw, Roddy Williams lives only a few miles away from me and is still giving well-attended concerts. MinorProphet (talk) 17:45, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

November 4

Why do Germans (and their friends) notate B𝄫 with Heses and not Bes?

The German notation of B𝄫 is Heses. The logic of it escapes me. It'd seem more natural to use Bes. Hes doesn't even exist (it's B) so why should Heses? Anyone's got an idea? 178.51.16.158 (talk) 04:54, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Alteration by a chromatic semitone downwards is indicated in German by appending -(e)s to the name of the tone, and alteration by two chromatic semitones downwards is indicated by appending -(e)ses. This is also the logic governing Heses. Note that double flats made a relatively late appearance in Western music. The real question is then, why the German name B instead of Hes? The roots of this exception are historical, B being the majuscule of earlier b, going back to Guido of Arezzo's notation of ♭ for a semitone up from a, while h stood for his ♮, a full tone up from a. Confusing as this already is in view of the English and Dutch notations, using Bes for B𝄫 would only have added to the confusion.  --Lambiam 07:05, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Actually, you were saying three questions earlier Guido borrowed from pseudo-Odo. Remember? (A fun name! Try saying it three times in a row!) And I believed you. So credit where credit's due. And in case anyone wonders why Lambiam brought in the Dutch: in the Netherlands B is B, Bes is B♭ and there is no H. That is relatively new I think. Post World War II. 178.51.16.158 (talk) 07:39, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Or perhaps post the Napoleonic Wars.^[25]

While the use in Pseudo-Odo's Dialogus de musica is the first known use, these names might have been forgotten but for their adoption by the influential Guido van Arezzo.  --Lambiam 11:46, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

So the Dutch have actually been doing that for hundreds of years. I've learned something new. Thanks. 178.51.16.158 (talk) 12:26, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

November 7

Leave it to Charlie DVD Release

I'm currently looking to see if the itv sitcom Leave it to Charlie was released on DVD and wear can I buy it. Matthew John Drummond (talk) 18:37, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately we do not (yet) have an article on this 1978-80 26-episode ITV series. Searching the IMDb (see here), and websearching, does not find me any mention of a DVD having been made. There is a hint that it may have been broadcast in Canada under a different title, so it is possible (though unlikely) that there is a DVD under that title, whatever it is. Sorry not to have been of more help. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.7.95.48 (talk) 21:24, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

November 8

Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards

I've noticed that a few films that won Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards are actually adult-themed with mature content - Pretty Woman, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Abduction. Why is that? 212.180.235.46 (talk) 21:41, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

A number of the others also have violent themes. Such as Jurassic Park, with dinosaurs eating people, and Star Wars, with people impaled by lightsabers. According to Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, the kids are the ones making the choices, or at least are supposed to be. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:05, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

November 9

recording multiple roles

In animated shows like The Simpsons where the main cast play multiple characters each, how is dialogue between one actor's characters, such as Burns and Smithers (both Harry Shearer), recorded? Is it done all at once, with the actor switching voices with each line? (Seems difficult.) Or in two (or more) passes, with a stand-in reading the lines of the other party for timing? Or something else? —Tamfang (talk) 06:39, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

I can't speak for the Simpsons, but when Mel Blanc used to do multiple voices in the same cartoon, he would record all the dialogue for each character separately. As I recall, he would do Yosemite Sam last, since it was rough on his vocal chords. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:39, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

The usual procedure is that the voice actor is recorded before the animation is produced. Lip syncing between the recorded sound and the animated character's mouth movement is done by the animators, originally by hand, but now software exists that uses a video of the mouth movements of the voice actor to make the lip sync process automatic. Typically, if the mouths of two characters are both visible, their speech never overlaps, and the timing of a dialogue is only created during animation. That is also when ambiance sound is added. Therefore it is up to the actor in what order the recordings are made. Most often they will record multiple takes of each set of lines.  --Lambiam 12:43, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

The Bristol Entertainment characters name's

I'm trying to find what the names of the characters are in the 1971 tv play The Bristol Entertainment. The tv play has 7 cast members although the names of the character they play in the tv play have not been added yet so what are the names of each character in the tv play then I can add them onto IMDb. Matthew John Drummond (talk) 18:29, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Just to let any of you know The Bristol Entertainment was a 1971 tv play produced by the BBC. Matthew John Drummond (talk) 16:42, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

If you know the approximate date of the broadcast, you may be able to find this information by searching the BBC Genome site. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.7.95.48 (talk) 17:27, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

On genome it does not show the names of the characters that each of the seven actors played *https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/87a3b1f233bf49ff9ba311c2c17ee3c2 Matthew John Drummond (talk) 18:05, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

RE: WIKIPEDIA article about Woodstock & Max Yasgur --- What was the actual USPS mailing address and zip code for Yasgur's farm? Was Yasgur's dairy farm physically in Bethel, NY or Cochecton, NY

(Moved here by me from the Help Desk. City of Silver 20:40, 9 November 2024 (UTC))

Just want to know which town in NY State, the Yasgur dairy farm was actually located. MyMarue (talk) 20:33, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

According to our article Woodstock, the festival was held "on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York". Our article Max Yasgur agrees: "He was the owner of the 600-acre (240 ha) dairy farm in Bethel, New York, where the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was held on August 15–18, 1969." The promotional Woodstock poster gives the location as "White Lake, Town of Bethel, Sullivan County, N.Y." All sources I see about the Woodstock monument at the festival site agree that it is located in Bethel. MapQuest gives Yasgur's Farm Cafe as being at 200 Hurd Rd, Bethel, NY 12720. There are sources placing the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts with the Woodstock Museum in Cochecton, but the website of Bethel Woods also gives their address as 200 Hurd Rd, Bethel, NY 12720.  --Lambiam 21:31, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

On maps, this site is located in Bethel, about 3 miles (4.8 km) east of the border with Cochecton.  --Lambiam 21:49, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Freaky Friday (2003 film) - Production/Filming dates

When did production/filming for director Mark Waters' film version of Freaky Friday began and when it finished? 81.152.18.78 (talk) 22:32, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

November 10

Poster on the cover of "You're a Lady"

The front cover of You're a Lady (album) shows Peter Skellern sitting in front of a poster.

You can get a better view of it on the back cover. It's starkly geometric, like a cube draped in green.

Does anyone know what poster this might have been? Marnanel (talk) 23:52, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

It looks kind of like a bed. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:22, 11 November 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."^[26] 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,^[27] 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"^[28] and
• 384 kcal / 100 g for "Noodles, egg, dry, unenriched"^[29] and
• 138 kcal / 100 g for "Noodles, egg, unenriched, cooked, without added salt".^[30]

 --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.^[31] 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?

I’ve been an official poll watcher, a few years ago. I got to stay and watch the ballots be counted at the polling place immediately after voting was done. We had witnessed that the ballot boxes were empty before voting started, that only ballots properly given to registered voters for that precinct went into the box, and that the number of ballots at the end of the day equaled the correct number. The ballots went through tabulating machine and the totals were printed out, with a copy for each party, for the reporters who stopped by and for the city clerk. Printout and ballots were turned in. Local counting and multiple copies would have made it evident if ballots had been altered or replaced. Today we can select electronic voting or a paper ballot. With electronic voting, a paper ballot is printed when done, and the voter oks it if it reflects his choices. Again the votes are locally tabulated and the totals preserved in multiple copies, as a check against fraud, but totals are sent in electronically to the clerk for quick reporting. Edison (talk) 22:53, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

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)

November 8

is Hong Kong and Macao "sovereign" states?

i just found this (List of sovereign states by Internet connection speeds) article and it lists both hk and macao (all are parts of the PR China), so that makes me wonder: are these two even be considered "sovereign"? Coddlebean (talk) 06:21, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Obviously not, a cursory look at Sovereign state would've disabused you of this possibility. They're clearly there because the article is titled or scoped awkwardly and their inclusion in such a list seems worthwhile, not because that claim to their sovereignty is actually being made. In general, you should double-check and then discuss problems with pages on their respective talk pages, not obliquely litigate them at the Reference Desk. Remsense ‥ 论 06:29, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Their existence in the article comes from a time before the article was moved in 2022. Whether it was the move, or is the current inclusion, that is questionable is an exercise for editors and if necessary the talk page. Also @PK2: who made the move. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 23:02, 8 November 2024 (UTC)