"I've been swimming in raw sewage. I love it!"
They're always finding dead bodies in the river here. I imagine an ocean would have even more dead bodies just because it has more water.
We also have raw sewage in the rivers, but only after it rains. And it's getting better because of a multi-billion sewer expansion and the closing of a Taco Bell.
Basic concept of the Olympics:
kill some dogs, destroy some poor people's homes, destroy small businesses, and bitch about whether they will be ready in time.
London wasn't a complete shit show. True, G4S Goved everyone, but the armed forces were able to pull things together at the last minute.
5. It met the criteria in 4, though. Otherwise the armed forces wouldn't have had to pull things together.
It doesn't seem like four years since the London Olympics. I'm getting old.
Another important question brought up by this exchange: is it "use to be" or "used to be", and why?
It used to be "use to be" but not any more.
Olympic athletes are "almost certain to come into contact with disease-causing viruses that in some tests measured up to 1.7 million times the level of what would be considered hazardous on a Southern California beach."Don't fuck around, do they?
It's "use to be" if it was, and "used to be" if it was in the past.
It's "used to be". I'm a professional, I know.
But what if it WASN'T? As is this case- "didn't use[d] to be"
"Used to," in my idiolect. Wiktionary seems to agree (etymology 2 definition 7). However I could imagine that for some people it becomes "use to" because you have two dental stops in succession; the unvoiced one at the front of a word is more marked so the other one gets elided.
I didn't use "to be", I used a different verb.
I probably should have said "it used not to be". But I was afraid the Gods of Grammar Snobbery would smite me.
IT MEANS IT GETS RESULTS, YOU STUPID CHIEF!
16: You don't have to split the infinitive, but if you want to, go for it.
You can't split an infinitive. It's "used to right be always".
Ah. Having figured out where 8 came from in the first place: it's "use to be" if preceded by a verb which takes the past tense "didn't use to be". Else, "used to be".
14- probably, but that's not my question. My question is about where you put the tense, when you have a negation. "Didn't" already has tense, which in normal cases would mean that the main verb gets infinitive form. But "used to" might be frozen?
They both looked weird to me. Shoulda gone with "didn't usta"
20- I didn't! "to be" is the infinitive.
25: I know you didn't; I'm trying to surreptitiously bring you to the dark side.
23: There we go. I still think it looks weird, though.
24: You put the tense on the first verb: "did not use to be"; "never used to be"; "She used never to make mistakes".
"Her name is Rio and she defecates on the sand."
29: Well, now you're getting a little mansplainy* and oversimplify-y. Back to the shit show!
*Some kind of splainy, anyway
24: Oh, I see now, sorry. I think you're right; "didn't use to" does make more sense to me, and this link has more details and it seems to agree with you. Especially interesting is this bit:
1 The construction used to is standard, but difficulties arise with the formation of negatives and questions. Traditionally, used to behaves as a modal verb, so that questions and negatives are formed without the auxiliary verb do, as in it used not to be like that and used she to come here? In modern English, this question form is now regarded as very formal or awkwardly old-fashioned, and the use with do is broadly accepted as standard, as in did she use to come here? Negative constructions with do, on the other hand (as in it didn't use to be like that), although common, are informal and are not generally accepted. 2 There is sometimes confusion over whether to use the form used to or use to, which has arisen largely because the pronunciation is the same in both cases . Except in negatives and questions, the correct form is used to: we used to go to the movies all the time (not we use to go to the movies). However, in negatives and questions using the auxiliary verb do, the correct form is use to, because the form of the verb required is the infinitive: I didn't use to like mushrooms (not I didn't used to like mushrooms).-- New Oxford American Dictionary
There's still poop in the water there, you know. No "used to be" about it.
From 30: "Eight years ago, the government established the Pacifying Police Units, a heavily armed force that tries to reclaim favelas from the gangs."
Yeah, but 29 didn't actually contain anything that wasn't already in the question, and didn't address the idea of whether or not "used to" is frozen and thus immune to the machinations of tense. (Which I suspect to be the case in many idiolects, if not those represented here.)
"In the favelas of Rio, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crime, and the death squads that just shoot people who look like trouble. These are their stories."
"is this worse than most olympics? I feel like most olympics are shit shows
L.A. in 1984, bitches. Didn't lose money, largely used existing facilities, etc. I was only eight but my dad was still working at the museum and we'd go down and wander around checking out the scene.(for you non So Cal people, Exposition Park is across the street from USC and hosts the Coliseum, a big rose garden, and the museums of tech and natural history)
The Olympics are absurd and need to die in a fire. That fire won't be in Rio because they won't have money for gas, but I'll settle for dying in a puddle of sewage instead.
Ew. Also that's a much better insult.
" According to one calculation, in Rio a woman is more than 10 times more likely to be raped than catch Zika. (Men are more likely to be shot to death.)"
40 gets it, as we used to say, exactly right.
Perfect time for some creative enterprising terrorists to introduce cholera into the situation.
The Olympics need a Brexit, so their break up can be accomplished without anyone firing a shot. Or dying in a sewage fire of cholera.
40 seems right, but that would destroy so many young people's dreams. And many many more other people enjoy them so much.
Meanwhile the Tokyo Olympics committee scrapped its original ("toilet seat") stadium design last year to cut costs, then realized the new design doesn't include anywhere to put the Olympic cauldron. The original logo (which was quite good) also had to be scrapped because of plagiarism accusations, and the new version is about as uninspired as it's possible to be. But given that Abe gifted the chairmanship of the Olympic committee to "heart of a flea, brain of a shark" Mori, the most gaffe-prone of all Japan's recent prime ministers, I guess it's to be expected.
Just so long as people respect the law when they enjoy young people.
It seems like a nice idea -- get people from all the world together to participate in a friendly competition. Why does everything we do become so complicated and wrong?
Also, Brazil is really going to pieces, isn't it? A few years ago they seemed to have gotten their shit (haha) together at last.
The OED cites usages of "used not to" between 1387 and 2004 (adding "now somewhat formal"), "did not use to" 1548-2001, "didn't used to" 1782-1993. So everyone's right!
There's also "usen't to" and "usedn't to".
49 and 52 are right. The Olympics in theory are great. The Olympics in practice just fuck up people's cities and loot public funds for private gain.
54: All that shows is that every possible mistake has been made at some point or another.
It's possible that money has a corrupting influence on sport. Maybe other areas of life too.
56: Yes, and with great consistency in all cases.
Of course style guides should pick one they prefer.
"...but that would destroy so many young people's dreams...
If we can't destroy young people's Olympian dreams then 2016 will have failed to be all it could have been.
Being a man of his convictions, Barry will be voting Trump in November.
Those are fighting words, Mr. Character.
" According to one calculation, in Rio a woman is more than 10 times more likely to be raped than catch Zika. (Men are more likely to be shot to death.)"
I'll take oddly unreassuring comparisons for 500, Alex.
" According to one calculation, in Rio a woman is more than 10 times more likely to be raped than catch Zika. (Men are more likely to be shot to death.)"
Zika symptoms are extremely mild anyway. The risks of catching Zika are entirely borne by fetuses.
Every risk is borne by fetuses. Just the lag varies.
If we can't destroy young people's Olympian dreams the world then 2016 will have failed to be all it could have been.
Mutatis mutandis, Mr. Freed.
The Olympics were fine until Bob Costas talked over Robbie Robertson singing Stomp Dance in Salt Lake City. Since then, all of civilization's been going to hell in a hand basket.
Three things that have failed to promote lasting world peace:
The Olympics
The Nobel Peace Prize
Woodrow Wilson
If there were lasting world peace, no Peace Prizes could be awarded; the Prizes therefore incentivize war. It's Econ 101.
Speaking of, Nobel? The explosives manufacturer? Wake up, sheeple.
Not Olympics but this thread title is the right place to say that court seemed okay. Our mediation agreement isn't quite finished enough to enter but the judge claims he'll accept it rather than go rogue. So I don't have to be afraid of that anymore and can switch to paranoia that something will go drastically wrong and the mortgage I'm getting will fall apart or something. Or I could just be stable and okay with things as they are, which I do occasionally manage.
It's a good thing I was able to get my employer to buy me a copy of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, meaning I have copies both at work and at home! Let's see what it has to say!
Or Kentucky will bid for the Olympics and expropriate your house. For every silver lining, a cloud!
They can have the current house, Mossy, and maybe then I won't have to go back to mediation to talk about whether Lee can have a say in how tidy I keep things since she should get to control what her children experience. Whether she thinks she can do that in a home I own and live in is unclear. Presumably.
§ 2.5.9 Use
This is the most marginal of the auxiliares. [Ouch!] For many speakers, especially younger ones, it does not belong in the class at all; many others have it as both auxiiliaru and lexical verb (with the former belonging to a somewhat more formal style). We therefore find both:
65.i.a % He usedn't to like it. (auxiliary) [????]
65.i.b % Used he to live alone? (auxiliary)
65.ii.a He didn't use to like it. (lexical)
65.ii.b Did he use to live alone? (lexical)
Choice between the negative variants is sometimes avoided in informal style by using never: He never used to like it. The version with analytic negation, He used not to like it, could be construed either as an auxiliary with primary verb negation, or else as a lexical verb with negation of the non-finite complement. Usedn't is prounced without an internal /t/ and sometimes written usen't; similarly used to is pronouced with a single /t/ and hence is homophonous with the use to of [ii], and the spelling used is sometimes found instead of use in these negative and inverted constructions.
Just like a body corporate! All the intrusions with none of the expense!
"Most marginal of the auxiliares" would make a good pseud
"Auxiliaries" in 74, obviously.
Use does not normally appear as an auxiliary in the emphatic polarity or stranding constructions:
66.i *He claims neither of use used to reply but we used to. (emphatic)
66.ii *Kim used to like it and I used as well. (verb stranding)
Contrastive stress on use can only emphasise the past aspectual meaning, not the polarity, so the only possibility in [i] is but we DID. In [ii] the only possibilities are to-stranding (and I used to as well) or do (and I did, as well).
Morphologically, use is highly defective: it has no present tense, no gerund-participle, and no part participle. [footnote: Except that the preterite perfected had used is occasionally found: When Arthur had been a boy at school, he had used to play football.] The plain form is found only in construction with auxiliary do, as in [65.ii]. We have seen that it is not mutually exclusive with the modal auxiliaries, but it is clearly not itself a member of the modal auxiliary class. It lacks properties [I] and [K–M], while [J] is irrelevant because used is a preterite form so the issue of agreement doesn't arise. it is also semantically quite distinct from the modal auxiliaries: the meaning it expresses is aspectual, not modal.
There are further entries for aspectual "use" in the (lexical) index which I would be happy to consult if such is desired.
Who the f uses "usedn't", that's what I want to know.
The IOC is probably the most corrupt sporting body on the planet. They make FIFA look like boy scouts. It's telling no European country will host the winter olympics. They basically begged Oslo to take it, and the Norwegians said they'd only consider if the IOC cut out their demands for billions of $$ in graft, poorly thought out facilities requirements, and things like separate lanes on highways for olympics officials (!!). The IOC was like, nope, Almaty it is. From now on the Olympics are probably going to bounce around from one dictatorial failed state to another. In 20 years, Pyongyang will be hosting summer and winter olympics.
Following as usual in FIFA's footsteps.
80: The same people who use "shaven't".
The Olympics has always been a shit show. Maybe Rio is unprecedented in terms of its unreadiness for the big event, but the terrible havoc it causes to communities, poor people, and local economies is not that unusual. In Seoul in 1988, for example, whole neighborhoods were razed to the ground to make room for stadiums and tourist areas, tenant activists were imprisoned, and numerous people were killed when they refused to get out of the way of the bulldozers. The poor people who lived in the razed slums were sometimes relocated to jails and forced labor camps. At least the Seoul Olympics had positive economic effects for business in the city. It's not clear that that will be the result for Rio.
I wish they would just get rid of the Olympics. I love women's (s/b girls') gymnastics as much as the next person, but the cost is way too much. And it's mostly the poor people who pay the cost, while developers and crooked IOC officials benefit.
Alternatively, they should just dedicate a couple of cities in the world to the Olympics -- cities that already have a lot of stadiums and hotels and infrastructure. Even though it would be horrible to have the Olympics in my city, LA would fit the bill. Probably a few other U.S. cities in the west. It's absurd that every four years we pick another site and destroy its city center, displace its poor people, and wreck its ecology.
Greece could use the money and has tradition on its side.
At least shaven't is pronounceable.
73: Thank goodness Lee has such a well-documented history of doing housework herself, and had shown such willingness to provide you with the time and money for housekeeping! Her devotion to the welfare of the children is touching.
Maybe you can encourage her to vacation in Rio.
73, 90: pwned. I'd say "dammit, J," but I agree with her too strongly.
Had s/b has. I know you've said that Lee is charming and compelling in person, Thorn, but I hope it helps at least a little to have a collection of people who thinks she is horrible.
Re: Olympics, I realize that it probably doesn't matter what any one individual does, but I wonder if I have some sort of moral obligation to stop watching it. Same goes for the next World Cup. Then again, maybe that's just self-indulgent self righteousness. I don't know--had a great morning but now I'm feeling cranky.
I'm way ahead of you on not watching the Olympics.
Don't worry, J, it's an increasingly large group who think she's awful IRL as well as here. She has basically no boundaries at this point. Maybe it will get better. If not, I'll presumably eventually get some sort of enforceable no-contact order.
And she did ask me to take the kids on Monday even though it's supposed to be one of the holidays she has with them so she can have some "me time" and clean up after her weekend with them, so apparently that's the way to get housework done. (I really probably shouldn't complain about the specifics but oh my god.)
I sort of took will's advice and wore a sleeveless linen dress, figuring sun dress proper would be a bit much. This community is very helpful!
OT: What's up with the research on vitamin D and depression?I've been in the "supplements are a waste of money promoted by quacks" camp for a few years now, but my basically trustworthy psychiatrist seems to like some of them, and my psychologist wants me to get my vitamin D levels tested, and thinks I might need to take mega doses. Meanwhile, I've been diagnosed with full-blown osteoporosis, and while I can't see my GYN about that until the end of July, I decided I might as well start taking calcium and D supplements now.
Still haven't decided whether I want to spend the money on ketamine treatments, or if I'm willing to devote the time and possible fight with my insurance company over TMS. Before cancer I had planned on spending this last year super-focused on my mental health, but now that I'm through it I'm tempted to just keep muddling through for a while. I don't have the energy or willpower for this shit.
Maybe this was on topic after all.
I think, based on absolutely no data, that either the test of the acceptable standards for vitamin D changed in the last few years, because absolutely everyone I know now shows as having a deficiency. That said, it sounds like the supplements can't hurt.
Ketamine that is. Maybe somebody should look into adding vitamin D.
96: it's because so many people now (a) avoid any significant sun exposure and (b) wear daily sunscreen anyway.
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Awesome. Second year I n a row our summer vacation is off to a (travel related) shitshow start. We had three flights with reasonable cushion between them to get us to our Mediterranean island destination. Sadly, on three airlines. More sadly, the first is now delayed significantly, meaning we're out $600 change fees and differential and don't take off until 10:30 tonight.
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Also, instead of the Mediterranean, you're going to Morecambe.
Re: vitamin D, I looked into this a while ago after several female friends told me they'd been diagnosed with a deficiency, prescribed high doses, etc. etc. I think it's just a trendy topic that docs are using as a catch-all. Not their fault, but medicine has fashions just like any other field. More testing means more spread, usually. I suspect that the "normal" range is wider than we think and that lots of these women are fine, not very, very low. I think there's a fairly high initial placebo effect, but eventually they go back to feeling fatigued or off in some difficult to pinpoint way. (Also, Vit D is more like a hormone than a vitamin.)
Re: the osteoporosis, do you know how far off your numbers were? Long story, but women who've used Depo-Provera long-term have low numbers in their 30s (think 1-1.2 standard deciations below average), but lose bone density at a slower rate when they hit menopause, so it evens out in the end. (I spent a while doing personal research after ~8 years on it.) If I remember correctly, osteoporosis is diagnosed when density is more than 2 standard deviations below average. If you aren't that many standard deviations away, you might not really need to worry. They have decent ostroporosis drugs now if yours is more serious. I suspect calcium/Vit D won't help all that much. There's not a lot of bone density increase for women in their 30s no matter what they do. Load bearing exercise is supposed to be good, though, still, which I don't really understand.
Last but not least, I'd throw the money at ketamine for one round if I were you. I gather people see effects pretty much immediately, so one trial would tell you if it's worth pursuing. Also, not that osteoporosis isn't serious, but you're probably not a big fall risk (unless you have balance or muscle problems), so that can wait a bit. If the ketamine helps, you'll probably have more stamina to take on other stuff, like fighting with insurance.
(I am just a dilettante at all things medical, though. I bet I'll hear shortly how wong or out of date I am.)
99(c) is that no one drinks Vitamin D milk* anymore.
*for some reason some people call whole milk this; it's not clear to me whether this correctly indicates that lower fat milks have no D, or if it's just some weirdness.
99: Harvard says not really on the sunscreen thing.
Sunscreen prevents sunburn by blocking UVB light. Theoretically, that means sunscreen use lowers vitamin D levels. But as a practical matter, very few people put on enough sunscreen to block all UVB light, or they use sunscreen irregularly, so sunscreen's effects on vitamin D might not be that important. An Australian study that's often cited showed no difference in vitamin D between adults randomly assigned to use sunscreen one summer and those assigned a placebo cream.
103: Maybe because it's fat-soluble, so more can go into whole milk? I don't have the resources to really fact-check this, but a quick Google shows that humans make 90% of their Vit D and get about 10% from diet. IIRC, you need about 15 min of sun per week, some tiny amount, to make normal amounts.
I would be so pissed if I had to slather cream on myself all summer with no sun-protection benefits.
Thanks, ydnew! That matches what I had suspected with D. I'll still go ahead and do the bloodwork so at least my docs and I are on the same page.
As for osteoporosis, mine is fairly advanced in my spine, less advanced in my hips, and I've been in menopause for a year. I'm sure my doc will put me on a bone builder; the question is whether I should opt for HRT as well.
Yeah, I should probably opt for the ketamine.
I think vitamin D gets thrown around a lot mainly because (1) if you genuinely have a real deficiency the symptoms can look like the general crappy feeling symptoms that contribute to all kinds of problems and (2) we really don't know that much about a lot of vitamins in practice (given natural variation, diet, etc.) and (3) there doesn't seem to be any harm in taking what we're pretty sure is way more than you need and it's not that expensive. I think there are a bunch of "Eh. [shrugs] Why not?" things like that that doctors throw out when they're not sure where to go from where they are.
I take vitamin D supplements because someone mentioned it once and I bought a bottle and that bottle had a year's worth of pills in it. Whenever they run out is when I'll stop taking them, and since I didn't see any change when I started that's when I'll learn if they were actually doing something. (That's how I learned that the fish oil supplements were actually doing something: they started slowly and I didn't notice, but when I stopped taking them I noticed fast.)
when I stopped taking them I noticed fast.
What did you notice? What do they do?
As far as ketamine goes, have you considered getting procedural sedation for whatever your closest upcoming unpleasant medical procedure is? The benzos are the most common for that but ketamine is also used in a lot of cases (especially emergency medicine). And, um, maybe you find getting blood drawn intensely traumatic* and, by coincidence, would prefer to get some ketamine to make it more tolerable?
I mean, I know I've recommended lying to doctors before when it was necessary but this would be more like lying to insurance companies. I'm pretty sure that's morally acceptable at the minimum.
*I certainly do anyway. After the last one I really am going to have an ultimatum-heavy talk with my doctor before I get another.
113: Psychiatric stuff. As far as I know most of the other health claims about it were overblown, but that's a known one.
Ha, I get my blood drawn so often that there's no way that would work. The next two procedures I'm having are just using local anesthetics.
I honestly don't understand why people don't find getting blood drawn more unpleasant than they do. Bad luck on my part I guess.
But even if you're just getting local anesthetic that doesn't mean you couldn't at least push hard for some sedation - maybe not full on procedural sedation like they use for some things, but it's not a strange thing to do when a procedure can be particularly unpleasant and the doctor doesn't want to deal with someone acting really unhappy about it. I mean, colonoscopies don't even require local anesthetic and it's practically the standard of care there.
I'm pretty sure from when Selah's thumbnail got reattached that the amnesia-inducing levels of ketamine only can wipe out stuff pretty close to the time you go under, which is too bad because you'd have a good argument for erasing the last year plus.
Track 8 here has some helpful participant observation on the effects of Ketamine on aging rock and rollers.
117: I mean, I hate it, and get anxious, and refuse to look at the needle, but it's gotta happen. At least now it's only every three months, whereas for the past year it's been every three weeks.
I never use sunscreen and never had a problem in Arrakis but I went golfing (don't judge me) with my dad yesterday and I'm burnt bright red.
Well that's what happens when you don't wear your stillsuit.
Well, we got lucky. They actually swapped down to a smaller plane, causing extreme overbooking and loss of seating info. We got to the airport nice and early fearing security delays. Ended up getting four of the final five seats on the plane. And all bumped up to business class.
Great. Heathrow to Euston Station. Take the express to Preston and then the local to Morecambe.
110: I'm sorry you're going through that. Happy to be minimally helpful. And yeah, I figured on the menopause, but wasn't sure whether at your age you'd see the same bone density drop, and whether it would be "you have the bones of a 70 year old" or "your bones are well outside average for someone your age," which would still be osteoporosis but less concerning because it wouldn't decline much later nor imply truly frail bones.
121: Time of day matters, too. But still, ow.
123: Hooray! Enjoy your vacation. When you make it there.
125.2 That must have been it. I was out from about 11 AM to 3 PM.
123 Enjoy the vacation.
J, what's the reason against HRT, post-mastectomy? I love my HRT.
125: The radiologist said it was sufficiently advanced as to have started prior to cancer treatment. My fracture risk is very high, so I guess I just have to worry about falling on icey sidewalks.
MHPH: How much fish oil did you take? Does the red krill kind work as well?
My cancer wasn't estrogen receptive, so it is still an option for me. I just didn't want to be stuck taking yet another drug, and since I still have my uterus I would have to take estrogen with progesterone, and then have a fake period four times a year. If my GYN feels strongly about it, I'll probably give it a shot.
128: I don't know about the various kinds - as I vaguely recall the real benefits come from one of the two and not the other, and that a ratio slanted in the wrong direction undercuts the effect a bunch. I typically take two or three tablets a day, which amounts to about 1/2 gram each of EPA and DHA. If I was fancy and rich I'd probably look into finding versions with better balanced amounts but I'm not.
I double checked because it bothered me still: it's EPA that's the heavy hitter, and ideally you should try to get about a gram of it a day, and maybe half that of DHA (too much of it relative to EPA undercuts the effects). Or at least that's roughly what I can tell from a quick scanning of stuff. I'm sure there's someone out there selling chemically purified EPA or something and not just gel capsules filled with rendered fish goo, but I bet they aren't selling big bottles of them for five dollars. The biggest links tend to show up with bipolar II problems, I think. Other stuff is less obvious.
The thing to watch out for is that a lot of stuff (e.g., the first thing that came up when I searched for 'red krill oil') can be pretty useless. It said it provided 86mg a day of Omega-3 fatty acids and... well.. you're going to have to eat like half the bottle in order to get a useful dose with those. (Also watch out for the extent to which the packaging on most of them will declare that they contain over a gram of whatever oil - the amount overall doesn't matter only the EPA and DHA amounts.)
I've been taking Vitamin D supplements lately. A lot of people up here, including some doctors, say the low sun angle is insufficient to naturally produce enough. I'm not sure how solid the evidence really is on that, and I've gone back and forth on whether to take the supplements in the past, but there doesn't seem to be any particular downside in reasonable quantities so I decided to give it another shot. I haven't noticed any difference either physically or psychologically, but my life has been very stressful lately so that might be masking some effects.