Random Thread

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I think that sounds rather grave, and not like it's merely an acute case.

[Raphael]

Is it possible to install some kind of air conditioning in an apartment in a building that was originally built without air conditioning in a way that doesn't involve tearing the building down and building it anew?

[Ryusenshi]

There are portable air conditioners that you can install in any apartment. You only need a way to pass a tube outside (to carry hot air). My father did it by making a hole in a window shutter (and closing it with a plastic cover of the same color the rest of the year).

[Travis B.]

Is it possible to install some kind of air conditioning in an apartment in a building that was originally built without air conditioning in a way that doesn't involve tearing the building down and building it anew?

A lot of places have window air conditioning units that all you need for them is a window that opens to the outside.

[Raphael]

Thank you!

[Raphael]

Apropos of nothing, here's a neat lexical symmetry: in English, the drink is called "coffee", and the main active chemical substance in it is called "caffeine", while in German, the drink is called "Kaffee", and the main active chemical substance in it is called "Koffein". Seems like a and o kind of switch places there.

[alice]

Apropos of nothing, here's a neat lexical symmetry: in English, the drink is called "coffee", and the main active chemical substance in it is called "caffeine", while in German, the drink is called "Kaffee", and the main active chemical substance in it is called "Koffein". Seems like a and o kind of switch places there.

Completely fallacious remark: "This is surely a manifestation of a Germanic tendency going back at least as far as PIE."

[Raphael]

Is it normal for bumblebees to appear in large numbers? Because right now there are really a lot of bumblebees at a particular stretch of flowers in my neighbor's/landlady's garden.

[Linguoboy]

Is it normal for bumblebees to appear in large numbers? Because right now there are really a lot of bumblebees at a particular stretch of flowers in my neighbor's/landlady's garden.

Must be something blooming there they like.

[Travis B.]

With the way the bees have been dying off (first the honeybees, but from what I have heard other bees have started to be affected), the more bees the better.

[Raphael]

With the way the bees have been dying off (first the honeybees, but from what I have heard other bees have started to be affected), the more bees the better.

Somewhat related: a few years ago, I was positively creeped out by an absence of spiders. That is, during the time of the year that is usually the height of European garden spider season where I live, when there should have been big, fat European garden spiders hanging in their webs everywhere, instead there were hardly any to be seen anywhere. I assumed that something had been killing off all the insects, so the spiders didn't have enough to eat, but in any case, it indicated a serious ecological imbalance of some kind.

[Raphael]

Over the course of the last few weeks, in has sometimes felt like I live in the one place in the Northern Hemisphere that doesn't currently have major catastrophic wildfires going on.

[Travis B.]

Over the course of the last few weeks, in has sometimes felt like I live in the one place in the Northern Hemisphere that doesn't currently have major catastrophic wildfires going on.

Nah, no wildfires are occurring here either in this corner of the northern hemisphere.

[Linguoboy]

Over the course of the last few weeks, in has sometimes felt like I live in the one place in the Northern Hemisphere that doesn't currently have major catastrophic wildfires going on.

Nah, no wildfires are occurring here either in this corner of the northern hemisphere.

It depends what you consider our "corner" to be. There are fires in Western Ontario only 1100 km from you (which may seem far, but it's near enough that Chicago has been having serious air quality alerts for days on end).

[Ares Land]

Is it normal for bumblebees to appear in large numbers? Because right now there are really a lot of bumblebees at a particular stretch of flowers in my neighbor's/landlady's garden.

There sure are a lot of bumblebees around this year! I think weedkiller use is a lot more regulated these days (especially gkyphosate) and that's good news for biodiversity.

[Nortaneous]

Is it normal for bumblebees to appear in large numbers? Because right now there are really a lot of bumblebees at a particular stretch of flowers in my neighbor's/landlady's garden.

yes - I have a lot, and haven't tried to optimize my garden for bees. they seem to like plants in the mint family. (mint order? butterfly bush is Lamiales but not Lamiaceae. although I'm not sure why they set up the classification that way - it looks mintlike to me)

[Raphael]

Random Thought: My financial situation is neither good enough to worry about investments nor bad enough to worry about credit lines, so my case worker at my S&L and me don't really have much to talk about. Anyway, I bring this up because I've started to wonder recently about how unusual that situation would make me in the USA. Can I assume that in that country, people who don't have enough money to worry about investments are usually heavily indebted?

[Travis B.]

Random Thought: My financial situation is neither good enough to worry about investments nor bad enough to worry about credit lines, so my case worker at my S&L and me don't really have much to talk about. Anyway, I bring this up because I've started to wonder recently about how unusual that situation would make me in the USA. Can I assume that in that country, people who don't have enough money to worry about investments are usually heavily indebted?

One thing to consider, though, is that many people in the US have house payments, car payments, and student loan payments and may simultaneously have investments in the form of 401K's, while simultaneously paying their full credit card balances each month. (I primarily use credit cards for making payments even though I always pay my full balances because they are more secure than debit cards in the case of fraud.)

[zompist]

A random question about wine, specifically rosé.

My father could be pedantic about his hobbies, and one idea he got from somewhere was that "rosé is not wine." He would terrorize waiters with this declaration.

My question is, especially for our French members: is there anything to this? I just looked at the Wikipedia article on rosé, and I didn't see anything about wine snobs looking down on rosé.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I used to be a bartender, and I also never encountered this.