The Lounge

I was reading some angry comments by a member whose thread has been closed hours ago. This person wrote a saying in a language other than English. A language spoken by quite a number of people in the world that I couldn't understand. While using Google Translate in order to ascertain any possible precise nuances of the sentence, I've been led to ponder on how much of what we say might be lost in translation when we use such tools. Here's the result of my experiment taking a sentence in vernacular English as a seed and Hawaiian (how vernacular, I don't know) as target language in the first part of an obvious loop: Input in English: "Shut up, bitch!" Translation to Hawaiia…

Come with me to a celebration of 48 downvotes! The party is at somewhere between 220-250 million years from now a galactic time You can eat whatever my arse can imagine. See you there!

Not sure where to place this but anyway is anyone else watching the New BBC series about the evolution of Homo Sapiens. There are 5 separate 1 hour programmes in the series, of which the first has already been shown on BBC2. The presenter is a paleoanthropologist and interestingly a woman. I say interestingly not in a disparaging way but because there is a noticeably softer approach from previous 'hard sicence' programmes with male presenters. This programme is also bang up to date with much new material and hypotheses about the evolution of our species. As such it may well be of interest to all those who have been arguing about this subject recently.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge in UK have determined that a medieval scribal error triggered centuries of confusion and misunderstanding over a long-lost saga. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/18/science/medieval-saga-chaucer-mystery-error The saga in question is a little-known text in Middle-English called The Song of Wade, twice mentioned by Chaucer, but largely forgotten nowadays. Researchers now believe that a transcription error changed a ‘W’ to a ‘Y’, transforming ‘Wolves’ into ‘Elves’. Another word in the excerpt, translated as “sprites,” should instead be “sea snakes,” moving the story even farther away from the realm of the supernatural, the researche…

Just read the annual report for 2024 and was depressed to read, first of all, the Dean's report, which was full of the trendy, dull, corporate-sounding platitudes that I tend to think indicate a 2nd rate mind. I was resigning myself to the idea that this is what academic institutions have become nowadays when I started reading the report on the college in 2024, written by the college theology tutor, Prof Mark Edwards. What a relief. The donnish sense of waspish humour is still alive after all, I'm pleased to say. I quote one passage that amused me: ...we have welcomed two new Canon Professors, Andrew Davison as Regius Professor of Divinity and Luke Bretherton as Professor…

Here is a short story (fiction) I wrote for a creative writing course in 2010. The instructor called it disappointing, but it is a short read and I think you will like it. 9 Simply Unified Bobby Joe Snyder ENG340 Creative Writing 10-20-10 Dennis Nilson The sun is rising in the east. It is a busy morning rush which is why he chose to ride now. The people are like atoms circling through the rectangular aisle, bouncing off one another, occasionally releasing a charge off the train. They go to power some unknown meaning. When you are working your hardest as a physici…

Hi all. Saw this; with 'caps lock' and 'shift´ and 'backspace', and 'enter' and... is it a joke ? 😟

What do you think about McDonald's? Do you attend this.. restaurant? I suggest you reading the history of McDonald's, because it is very remarkable for understanding one's values. Also there's a movie, "Founder", 2016. I think it describes this story without judgements, and everyone decides for themselves. The moral is in the position of brothers. "Years after the brothers sold to Mr. Kroc, someone asked Richard McDonald if he had any regrets. None, Mr. Halberstam relates. ''I would have wound up in some skyscraper somewhere with about four ulcers and eight tax attorneys trying to figure out how to pay all my income tax,'' Mr. McDonald replied." https://en.m.wikipedia.…

I've been away for a few days, attending my son's graduation and found a burn mark on the papers on my desk when I returned. I have a paperweight in the form of a transparent glass globe, which I had left holding down some papers because I had the window open in the hot weather before I left. The glass globe had evidently focused the afternoon sun onto the paper and burnt it. It had gone through 3 sheets. I'm damned lucky it didn't set the whole room on fire. Definite learning point there.

Or know what this gadget is for; or how does it work ? Am sorry, cannot make it a larger image ☹️

Hi. if a dough has excess butter or too little; what changes ? Aiming for fine 'crumbly' result. My understanding of the word crumbly is like compacted flour dust, not compacted sand texture, breaking and collapsing when biten. Clues from the baking fans, please ?

The Reflection of Someone The Beautiful Lie The Best Teacher The Story of Someone I will try to add more with time.

Remember when we were certain the future would be full of flying cars, robot butlers, and vacations on Mars? Well… here we are in 2024, still waiting! 😄 From old sci-fi movies to "expert" forecasts, some predictions were hilariously off the mark. Like: "By the year 2000, we’ll all have personal jetpacks!" (Nope, just traffic jams and Uber.) "Food pills will replace meals!" (Meanwhile, DoorDash exists.) "The paperless office is coming!" (Cue the printer error sounds…) So, what’s the most outrageous or amusing future prediction you remember? Did anyone actually think we’d live in underwater cities? That homework would be done by AI (okay, maybe that one’s close)? Share your…

Before Google (or even textbooks!), many of us learned ‘facts’ that turned out to be hilariously wrong. For example: My teacher swore atoms looked like tiny solar systems (Rutherford model, we see you!). A neighbor told me lightning never strikes the same place twice—turns out, the Empire State Building begs to differ. What outdated or quirky science myths did you grow up with? Bonus points if you later proved them wrong yourself! P.S. If you’re a younger member, share myths your elders tried to sell you. Let’s debunk with dignity!

My smoke tree is particularly fine this year.

Hi, I am coming from the inside of Rowan university. What university, are. All of you happening to be arriving from? I also happen to have this pink. Sheet. Which, I replaced with, or from, the man, no, the paper? Or the bed planks. FR. omn. The other UNI!

Here you can post all questions and answers generated for you by AI. Model: Gemini 2.5 Pro 06-05, Google AI Studio. Prompt: "Create an esoteric programming language that makes even a simple program look like a secret document from X-Files".

Too see how creative people can get, let’s make a list of random ways to die in the Hells Creek Formation, for fun and humorous intent of course. Ill start: Getting rammed and impaled by a triceratops porosus You continue!

PAY ATTENTION! (It's just for humorous intentions, that's the reason of that topic being in the Lounge, instead of the Philosophy) In the middle of The Lounge and Philosophy, today i will try to resume some philosphers in 6 words or less: Nietzsche - I'm depressed, leave me alone Schopenhauer - Because Metaphysics wanted in this way! Augustine of Hippo - Because GOD wanted in this way!! Pyhtagoras - I love math and I hate beans Epicurus - Nature, having pleasures with this one! Diogenes - I hate material things, except me. Karl Marx - It's not yours, it's ours! (proceeds to begin the Soviet Anthem) Democritus - Everything is made of tiny stuff (ATOMS!) Thales - Greece has…

Was sat in a friend's garden today when his solar-charging battery unit burst into a ferocious sustained jet of flame and gas about 2 foot long. Put a hole through a seat cushion in seconds it was sat on. On reflection, I was thinking what can be done in that event. You absolutely cannot stop the flame and it causes damage in seconds before you even realize what's going on. My friend knocked it on the floor to reduce the potential damage to the garden furniture we were sat on. Not sure it was a good idea to have pushed and dropped it on the floor because it might have exploded? Appreciate your thoughts, and my lesson I got from it was "people first" and get out of the way…

The randomness is all the very different people that have their own styles as you will see from the video/s. The order is all of them coming together to create harmony. It's not click bait, just some music. Just thought how cool it was. All the quadrillions of different atoms coming together to produce these songs. Truly amazing when i think about it so I thought I'd share. Enjoy. Here's the page https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=1000+musicians Here is some music. It's truly amazing what we can do if we come together. Sadly some people are hell bent on being the opposite... And no, I have nothing to do with it, I just stumbled across this and saw how t…

How many (English) words can you (without AIs or SEs) think of that have no vowels ?

I believe it would be the human race disappearing What would it be in your opinion? I imagine someday, someone, or a group of people, wiping us, it would be kinda sad, but i guess we can't deny that it would be for the good of our host and its other guests I guess that achieving that would be wisdom, and not doing it would be egoism One could say that achieving this would be like giving up*, betraying the others *But giving up on what? On more discoveries? entertainment? enjoyment? I guess by posting this thread, i kinda hope someone would change my mind, but i guess this is just how it is I will always prefer to be sad and afraid than lying to myself, i hope

Write the most pseudoscientific thing you have ever heard, I'll start: questionable link removed by moderator In case you can't see the text due to my crappy screenshot quality it says "There is a good reason that dinosaurs and space rockets are always in the kids section." This is under an Eric Dubay video explaining how dinosaurs don't exist and how the "Nephilim" are true fossils that have been destroyed by the government too make everyone doubt god. Pretty sure everyone could guess my response.

Greetings. Has anyone here already; or what would it take to put together a rustic, magnetocaloric refrigerator using gadolinium, even if by manual cranking ? Gadolinium exposed to a magnetic field warms up; while In that state; does reversing the magnetic polarity changes anything, or removal of the field is needed ? Moving Gd into a magnetic field takes kinetic energy ? Removing it from a magnetic field also uses kinetic energy ?