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November 16

How does Google Maps define "population areas"?

I'm curious about the light gray color that Google Maps uses to denote (supposedly) populated places. According to one website, it's for "population areas, cities, suburbs", but the actual implementation seems a little weird. In my area, for instance, [Smaller Town] borders [Larger Town], which borders [Regional City] – but even though [Larger Town] has roughly twice the population and density of [Smaller Town], and hosts more businesses, schools, etc., [Smaller Town] – along with [Regional City] – is shown as built-up light gray, while [Larger Town] is shown as rural green. What gives? Lazar Taxon (talk) 18:46, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

My guess is that it uses census tract data for this information. The U.S. census has its own definitions for what it defines as an "urban area" vs. a "rural area", and these do not often follow political boundaries. The U.S. census calls these defined urban areas as a Census-designated place, and they are very common in areas local municipality boundaries do not closely mirror settlement patterns; for example in New England, where the census does not recognize New England towns as a legitimate municipality (despite being actual legal municipalities) because town lines do not often mirror settlement patterns, and towns often contain a mixture of urbanized and rural areas. This also happens in areas of the U.S. where legal incorporation is not always done alongside population growth; for example in unincorporated places like Cleveland, Johnston County, North Carolina (near where I live), which has no municipal government, but which otherwise resembles "town" from its settlement pattern. This information is, of course, specific to the U.S., but if you live in another country, Google is probably importing this data from whatever equivalent government body handles this sort of thing in your country, and for similar reasons. --Jayron32 19:22, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As a matter of fact, I am in New England – and you're right, it only shows the center of [Smaller Town] as built up, not the whole municipality. But I'm still baffled, because the center of [Larger Town] is, by any thinkable measure, more built up. Could it be that perhaps there's some measure of local prominence involved, and that [Smaller Town] is more "distinctively" built up owing to its greater distance from [Regional City]? Lazar Taxon (talk) 19:52, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
CDP definitions lag far behind "data on the ground" in my experience. I grew up in Hudson, New Hampshire, which has the smaller Hudson (CDP), New Hampshire. AFAIK, the boundaries of the CDP have never been changed since I was a child in the 80s; since then the town has grown from mostly rural with a small dense core to mostly urban densities; so the CDP no longer represents the built-up area. --Jayron32 20:04, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Europe warmer than North America?

I've been looking up the weather for London, UK. I'm wondering why London is warmer than Calgary even though they're at similar latitudes? 67.215.28.226 (talk) 20:20, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The immediate observation is altitude. Higher altitudes are generally colder. London is barely above sea level. Calgary is over 3,000 feet above sea level. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 20:27, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)See North Atlantic Current, a branch of the Gulf Stream. The mass movement of warm, tropical water northeast through the North Atlantic mediates the climate of Western Europe, making the temperatures milder than you find in other areas. Calgary also has a Continental climate, which is known for wilder temperature swings (higher highs and lower lows) than coastal regions, generally speaking. Climate is complex, and latitude is only a very rough predictor of climate; other factors (elevation, bodies of water, vegetation, etc.) often have as much or more of an effect. --Jayron32 20:28, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I see. Thank you. 67.215.28.226 (talk) 20:44, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Further to Jayron's excellent comments, Calgary has a very high level of 'Continentality', while the UK does not. Calgary is explicitly listed at Continental_climate#Canada. When the UK suffers what the media often calls a "Siberian blast" or similar, it's because our usual westerlies have turned into easterlies and we get to feel a touch of what others in Europe experience in winter, even at much more southerly lattitudes.

It's the same within Europe. You can compare the climates of cities on or close to the 51st parallel north. Most tend to have much colder winters and much warmer summers than London. --Dweller (talk) Old fashioned is the new thing! 12:57, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The effect of the Gulf Stream and its branches can also be seen by comparing coastal cities on similar latitudes... Boston and Pontevedra lie essentially directly across the Atlantic Ocean from each other along the 42nd parallel N. Boston has a daily mean annual temperature some 3 degrees celsius colder than Pontevedra. Similarly, London lies on the same parallel of latitude as St. Anthony, Newfoundland and Labrador, and has a daily mean annual temperature of 11! degrees celsius colder than London. The effect of the Gulf Stream on climate is massive. Even looking at locales on the western edge of North America, where the similar Alaska Current, the Pacific analogue to the Gulf Stream, is, we see that Port Hardy, British Columbia, the nearest Pacific coast municipality I can find at a similar latitude to London, is about 3 degrees celsius cooler. --Jayron32 13:14, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, it's the Gulf Stream. Inverewe Garden in NW Scotland is able to grow sub-tropical plants, despite being on much the same latitude as the lower end of Hudson Bay and Kodiak Island, Alaska. Alansplodge (talk) 13:56, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

November 17

Closest continent from here?

What's the closest continent from Cody, Wyoming, where I live (other than North America)? 67.215.28.226 (talk) 03:46, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Asia. Cape Dezhnev in the Russian far east is about 2,700 miles from Cody. The exact dividing line between the North and South American continents is open to debate, but it it is generally taken to be in southern Panama, along the Darién watershed. Even the nearest part of Panama is further from you. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:42, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! :) 67.215.28.226 (talk) 05:31, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Corrections for Arms and Armor book

We have a book, A Glossary of the Construction, Decoration, and Use of Arms and Armor in All Countries and in All Times, published by Jack Brussel (New York) in 1989. I found an order card from 1993 attached to it for a corrections supplement. Obviously, the order was never completed or it was never received. I have been searching for the corrections supplement, but I can't find it. All I have found is that Jack Brussel publishing was primarily focused on erotica, which is odd that they would publish a very large book on arms and armor. I see that publication was taken over by Random House after 1993, but I do not see any information on a corrections supplement from them. Contacting them, I've only received a response that the book is out of print and any corrections that would have been made were included in the last edition. Does anyone else have a trick to hunting down the corrections supplement for the original edition of this book? 97.82.165.112 (talk) 14:30, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A Glossary of the Construction, Decoration, and Use of Arms and Armor in All Countries and in All Times is the Wikipedia article, for anyone that wants a courtesy link. No idea about the correction supplement; but the book was originally published in 1934, and the original author was dead over 50 years when you acquired your edition. Not sure who was updating it, but it wasn't George Cameron Stone. --Jayron32 15:04, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A Google search only results in your enquiry above. If it exists, it apparently hasn't found its way onto the internet. Alansplodge (talk) 18:19, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Success of Wikipedia compared to other projects

I would like to know the secret of Wikipedia's success compared to other projects. I noticed that other projects like Wiktionary, Wikivoyage, and Wikinews don't have that level of success Wikipedia has and the WMF does not have apps for other projects. What does Wikipedia have that other projects do not besides a large userbase. Interstellarity (talk) 19:44, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

wikt:audacity fiveby(zero) 20:26, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Can you explain better and tell me how audacity has to do with my question? Interstellarity (talk) 20:49, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Nah, but i will point to Fuzheado's discussion of WP vs. Wikinews to make up for an inappropriate response. fiveby(zero) 21:29, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I imagine at least some of it is brought in by Google; due to Wikipedia's broad scope people can search just about anything and find a Wikipedia page for it. CoolJamesII (talk) 21:03, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Wiktionary is a fine dictionary, but I haven't seen anything about it that's notably better than any other online dictionary and the difference between online dictionaries and paper ones is not that great. Sure, the paper ones will be behind the times on neologisms, won't have spoken pronunciations, etc. but a dead tree version of the OED from five years ago is still perfectly usable. Encyclopedias aren't like that. The difference between online and paper encyclopedias is staggering: every new event, every new find or interpretation makes the paper version become obsolete very quickly. And when I think back to the crummy 60s set I used in the 80s with like ten illustrations per volume...! So, why Wikipedia versus other online encyclopedias? Some of it was just luck, and a bit of a feedback loop. More and better articles more quickly made encouraged more people to take part and continue the cycle. If there's a train wreck tonight, by tomorrow morning there will be a decent article about it; that doesn't happen in many other places. Matt Deres (talk) 22:25, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
When comparing Wikipedia with other online encyclopedias, surely the fact that anyone could add or improve content was a key factor.  --Lambiam 04:03, 18 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, see Wikipedia vs Encarta: The Ali-Frazier of Motivation which has a quote from Daniel H. Pink:
"In the mid-1990’s Microsoft started an encyclopedia called Encarta. They employed all the right incentives. They paid professionals to write and edit thousands of articles. Well compensated managers oversaw the whole thing to make sure it came in on budget and on time. A few years later another encyclopedia started — A different model — Do it for fun. No one gets paid a cent or a euro or a yen. Do it because you like to do it. Now 10 years ago if you had talked to an economist … anywhere … and said “Hey, I’ve got these different models for creating an encyclopedia — If they went head to head who would win? 10 years ago you could not have found a single, sober economist anywhere on planet earth who would have predicted the Wikipedia model. This is the Titanic battle between these two approaches. This is the Ali-Frazier of motivation, right, this is the Thrilla in Manila, alright — Intrinsic motivators vs extrinsic motivators — Autonomy, Mastery & Purpose versus Carrots & sticks – And who wins — Intrinsic motivation, autonomy, mastery and purpose — in a Knockout".
Alansplodge (talk) 11:52, 18 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is probably relevant. Complex life only likely evolved once on Earth because once complex life existed, it created conditions that made it highly unlikely for any other simpler life to itself evolve to the complex stage. Once successful, it became impossible for any later life to compete. This even precludes other kinds of living systems which, if given time to evolve, may have been better forms of life (for any given metric of "better") than current life it; the "head start" of our current life was enough to outcompete any putative better but later forms of life from ever getting to a stage to even compete. Wikipedia has the same advantage. It was the first online encyclopedia to reach a "critical mass" of success, it is now a stable ecosystem, and new online encyclopedias, even those that have the possibility of producing a better product than Wikipedia, will never get there because they are so completely outcompeted by Wikipedia as to be dwarfed by it. This also includes other "encyclopedia adjacent" reference works hosted by Wikimedia; basically Wikipedia (and in many ways even en.wikipedia) has "sucked all of the oxygen" out of the "user-edited reference work" space, and other similar reference works, even those created by Wikimedia stand no chance to survive. --Jayron32 14:14, 18 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

November 18

Count of records sold in the world

Who updates the Wiki page of counts of records sold in the world of music artists? (List of best-selling music artists) And are these counts reliable? Thank you. 93.41.96.25 (talk) 08:59, 18 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Articles are updated by many volunteers. You will see a list of them if you click the "view history" link above the article. The figures are drawn from reliable sources which are listed at the end of the article. Shantavira|feed me 09:40, 18 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

November 19

Multiple questions about an image

I just uploaded this image to Commons for future article use about Renoir's Lise. I found it on page 18 of Tintamarre-Salon: Exposition des beaux-arts de 1868 / dessins de Chassagnol neveu ; quatrains de John Stick, Maxime & Vabontrain. Several things about this I don't understand. 1) What was the purpose of this booklet? Is it related to the exposition catalogue of the Paris Salon of 1868? 2) Who is Chassagnol? Was this person an illustrator? 3) Who is Vabontrain? This person appears to have authored the attached quatrain at the bottom of the image. 4) The machine translation of the quatrain doesn't make any sense since it refers to Lise having blonde braids? Since she has brown hair in most depictions, am I translating "blondes tresses" incorrectly, or is there another altogether different context that I'm missing, and perhaps the poet is referring to the metaphorical blonde braids of some kind of goddess? Apologies for all the questions... Viriditas (talk) 02:01, 19 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Here's what I think. 1) It is like a catalogue of the works displayed at the 1868 Paris Salon,* but produced independently by Le Tintamarre. 2) Chassagnol neveu made the drawings, representing the works displayed. It appears that he was a regular illustrator for Le Tintamarre. 3) John Stick, Maxime and Vabontrain were three poets (or poetasters) who supplied the satirical quatrains commenting on the works. Perhaps they too were regular contributors to Le Tintamarre. "Vabontrain" was a pseudonym for the journalist Philippe Dubois. 4) The poet did not see the actual work but only the unflattering black-and-white depiction by Chassagnol neveu, and made a bad guess. (Blonde could also refer to a golden brown, but not to dark brown hair.)  --Lambiam 07:09, 19 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

*The number 3848 for the drawing of the sculpture L'Amour captif in the booklet agrees with the number it had in the 1868 Paris Salon.[1]

Does Ireland have Post Towns?

I've just been looking for a list of post towns in Ireland yet I can't find one.

All I've been able to find is this Postal addresses in the Republic of Ireland where I have no idea what it's talking about.

The article Post town claims that Ireland has post towns in the opening sentence, however I suspect that is incorrect.

The UK goes Neighbourhood/Village > Post Town/City > County

Whereas Ireland seems to go Neighbourhood/Village/Town/City > County Danstarr69 (talk) 13:44, 19 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The article 'Postal addresses in the Republic of Ireland' you linked above does mention post towns (3 times) and links to List of Eircode routing areas in Ireland, which lists them. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.217.47.60 (talk) 15:57, 19 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Since the first sentence in Post town is cited to a Royal Mail publication from 2006, it can only be relevant to Northern Ireland, and not Eire.
UK local authorities and other property data users are able to structure property data using the BS7666 standard (not publicly available for free, but described here). According to this structure, every Basic Land and Property Unit (eg a house, though it can get far more complicated than that) has a UPRN (unique ID), and is linked to a Street by the street's USRN. The BLPU may also have a Post Town and a Post Code (if it is a delivery point). A Street, on the other hand, has an optional Locality, and a Town.
The BLPU inherits the Town from the Street it is on, but has its own Post Town, so the Post Town is not necessarily the same as the Town. The Post Town is the location of a Royal Mail depot or sorting office, and is therefore relevant for addressing mail. The Town is a more general geographical unit; there are more Towns than Post Towns. -- Verbarson  talkedits 19:09, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Verbarson all of that code stuff went over my head.
And I know what a post town is as there's 7 post towns for my city, yet only 4 of them are actually part of the city, even though 3 of the 4 like to pretend they're independent places and most of the UK goes along with their fantasy.
I've been making a list of filming locations on and off for the last few years, and I quickly realised that using post towns is much better to get them in some sort of order, especially when it comes to small villages/neighbourhoods which are claimed by multiple authorities. However if a small village/neighbourhood is in a metropolitan city/borough, I use the metropolitan city/borough instead for places outside of the county and region of Greater London which Wikipedia and the world likes to pretend is a city. Danstarr69 (talk) 09:06, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

November 20

brothel on Gunkanjima / hashima

There is really low information about the brothel on the island.

Before UNESCO has signed the island as an important piece of culture, south Korea and China was clearly against it because korean "comfort women" and Chinese "trostfrauen" had to work there. My questio would be - where did they work? Exactly in this brothel what was there on the island all the time?

I saw this brothel marked on a map but i can't find the map anymore. Did this brothel was used before WW2? Or was this brothel marked on the map established after 1945?

Is there any known price list for this brothel before and after 1945?

If this island did and does belong to Mitsubishi does it mean everything on the island is property of Mitsubishi? Even this brothel? Asked by: --109.241.100.86 02:32, 19 November 2022 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.241.100.86 (talk) [reply]

Edit: based on maps jt looks like that the brothel didn't changed it place it was before and after 1945 on the same place the question is only if it has been closed or if the Japanese where so.. ridiculous just emptying the forced women and bring regular prostitutes there to the working place and the customers used the place like nothing special happened. Because since today there is no excuse or any payment for these women --109.241.100.86 (talk) 06:02, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If I remember it well, Gunkanjima was one of the most densely populated places on earth. Space being scarce must have influenced the location of the brothel and its possible changes. --Error (talk) 18:37, 22 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Information overload

I just experienced information overload for the first time. Not sure why it’s never happened before, but I was listening to a recorded lecture and it happened. Might be because I’m getting old and I reached some kind of tipping point where my brain basically gave up. Admittedly, I was doing caloric restriction and hadn’t eaten in like eight hours, so that might have something to do with it. How does one usually deal with such a thing? I was listening to a lecture for research on an article I am working on and suddenly I felt torn in multiple directions. Should I just write an outline based on the lecture? Would that help? Viriditas (talk) 08:50, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Try eating something and taking a nap. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots13:39, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It sounds like your brain ran out of energy and cut out low priority tasks, such as paying attention to a lecture. If that was what happened, it had little to do with information overload; the same could have happened with any task requiring concentrated attention but irrelevant to immediate survival.  --Lambiam 19:20, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that sounds right, but there's another piece to the puzzle. It felt like the blue screen of death. One part of my brain was desperately trying to figure out what the lecturer was saying, as she had a very thick, French accent. The other part of my brain was trying to focus on driving a car. Still, another part of my brain was trying to organize what the lecturer was saying and fit it into already existing categories I had created for expanding the article I was writing in my head. At some point, I could no longer hear or understand what was being said, as my brain gave up trying to focus on all the different parts and retreated to a semblance of white noise or silence in its thought process. Very strange. It really did feel like information overload, and the only metaphor I can find to describe it is some kind of realization or conception of the coastline paradox, but instead of the length of a coastline approaching infinity, I glimpsed the topics and subtopics within what the lecturer was saying and how they all connected together approaching infinity. And that's when the conscious awareness of my attention span and focus on the topic collapsed to a single point and flatlined. It felt like being crushed by an immense weight and being unable to move, or in this case, to think. There was also the sense of being pulled into many different directions by the information, but staying in one place, unable to make a decision as to which direction to take, which is why I think it fits the information overload description, which before this, I've never really experienced. Viriditas (talk) 20:57, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe you should talk to your doctor. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots22:08, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
About what, exactly? Do you often drive while listening to a lecture while trying to compose a Wikipedia article in your head? At some point, you will reach the limits of what your brain can do. I reached mine. Doing all three of these things at the same time led to information overload. I don't think talking to my doctor will help. I often try to push my body and brain to do things most people won't do just to see what it is capable of doing. And it really isn't capable of all that much. I would very much like to be able to split different parts of my brain up into active processes so that I can focus on many things at once. As it turns out, our brains can't really do it. Ideally, I would want to, for example, drive my car to do basic chores like shopping; listen to academic lectures while I'm driving; think about what I'm listening to and actively try to compose material for an article; even better, I would love to be able to think about ten different things all at once. Do you think my doctor will be able to help with that? I'm not a computer capable of processing many things at the same time. Hence the problem. Viriditas (talk) 22:45, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, the human brain and body have limits, and you've just discovered what some of them are. No harm generally in testing what your limits are – but, while failing at one or more simultaneous tasks usually has no lasting consequences, how about avoiding one of those being driving a vehicle on a public road, because if you fail at that you may well kill other people (as well as your self). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.217.47.60 (talk) 00:06, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If you drive, then you know it is mostly automatic, and doesn’t require much thought except for defensive perceptual control. In any event, a lot of people drive and listen to music, podcasts, or carry on conversations with other people. I thank you for your safety tips and acknowledge them, but let’s put driving aside for just a moment. My general complaint is that my body is perfectly okay with doing hundreds of things at once to control and maintain homeostasis. And my brain is likely involved in some of those things. But when it comes to actively trying to think about different things in different domains, why don’t we have the general ability to do that just like our body? My understanding is that some non-human brains do have this ability, for example dolphin brains. Which makes me wonder if we also have this ability. Let’s say I want to think about and ruminate on problem A. What’s to stop me from leaving that process running while I start to think about problem B? And C, and D, etc. Why does my brain have to focus and think about one thing instead of many, and what is stopping or preventing me from doing this? If you look at examples of extreme focus, attention, and flow states, it becomes obvious that there’s a paradox occurring. These unitary states of consciousness are characterized by the impression of no thought—the artist becoming one with the canvas, the musician with their performance, the driver with the road, the writer with the text, the runner with the track, ad infinitum. But if you look closely at these unitary states, the brain is doing a lot of different and discrete things; the unitary flow state is an illusion that the brain creates to keep the attention targeted, like a hunter focusing on its prey. So what if you could hack that state and redirect the discrete processes to voluntarily do all those different processes at will? You could then maintain different trains of thought, each proceeding on different tracks, and leading to different outcomes and conclusions in different domains. Viriditas (talk) 00:56, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The following is not supported (AFAIK) by the literature but reflects my personal theries. An important aspect of cognitive task execution is supervision, which will intercede and apply corrections if the execution is going off-track. Supervision is a scarce resource. Tasks that normally can be executed "automatically", meaning that they require hardly any any supervision, can also be executed in parallel. Almost any type of cognitive task can be mastered to a level in which it becomes automatic. But if several of such tasks executed in parallel go simultaneously off-track and the corrections are not simple, supervision will be overloaded and some of the tasks will not be executed satisfactorily. Most of this cannot be perceived by introspection, since automatically executed tasks not requiring correction leave no trace in memory; only when execution was not automatic but in some way out of the ordinary can an episode be remembered.  --Lambiam 09:54, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It occurs to me that the Proust effect (involuntary memory) may be a form of semi-conscious or aware cognitive parallel processing occurring in real time, and that exploring ideas as memories might be the way forward towards being able to think about two ideas at once. Viriditas (talk) 20:45, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Since you were driving at the time, distracted driving is relevant (also dangerous and illegal). 136.56.52.157 (talk) 02:02, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
People who drive and listen to lectures and think about them are generally not distracted from the road. What was discussed was my lack of attention to the lecture, not to my driving. This may come as some surprise to you, but there are thousands of people driving with extremely loud music playing on their stereos. I really don't think a soft-spoken academic lecturing about art is going to cause me to get into an accident, but what do I know, I've only been driving for many decades. Viriditas (talk) 02:14, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Don't be too sure about your first sentence. If you're not focused 100 percent on your driving, there's a greater risk of accident. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots02:36, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your concern, but I'm sure. I've been listening to lectures in my car since podcasts were invented in 2004 or so, and I've been listening to music in my car for many decades before that. I'm pretty confident that I can drive safely while doing it. The real concern with distracted driving is texting or using your phone, and it's accepted by most people studying the phenomenon that it's more dangerous than driving under the influence. I don't think you'll find many people passing laws against listening to audiobooks in your car. Thinking about it further, the idea of focusing 100% on a task may be the conventional wisdom, but it goes against what we know about engaging in a task requiring safety and precision. In the case of good driving, you need situational awareness first and foremost, and this requires, somewhat counterintuitively, to be loose and relaxed, not 100% focused. That means driving safely based on the changing, dynamic conditions. Too much focus, and you will get a kind of tunnel vision, preventing you from noticing things that require almost instantaneous reactions. So the rule is not to focus so much, but to relax and loosen up, and this opens you up to everything that’s going on around you and gives you mental headspace to react as circumstances change. It could be argued, therefore, that safe practices such as having a lecture playing in the background could relax the driver and improve situational awareness. Viriditas (talk) 06:03, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Can I ask follow-up questions? You wrote somewhere that the lecturer had an accent. Was it in general difficult to follow? Second, was the volume limited or excessive? Thing is, your brain might have had difficulty figuring out what was being said in the first place (acoustic perception) even before you could process the content (cognition). It might have happened that your brain got overloaded by the former and couldn't handle the latter. I have that. If I would be listening to someone talking in a complicated accent and/ or too quietly, and I would need to focus on something else as well at the time (but a low-level task), then I feel I could somehow have such an experience whereby at one point the lecture would sound gibberish to me. And this is the brain's way of telling you to hold your horses. Your situation of not having eaten in a while at that point (i. e. lack of nutrients for the brain, which it needs to work correctly) could have contributed to the situation. By the way, I'm forty and a linguist. I hope You respond because it's interesting. --Ouro (blah blah) 10:41, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I believe that is what happened, and I'm glad you picked up on it. The lecturer was Sylvie Patry of the Musée d'Orsay speaking at the Museum Folkwang. You can listen to it here. Her English is excellent and is easy to understand for the most part, but her French accent makes it a bit difficult to understand more complex words. And yes, she does move away from the microphone at times during the talk to try and figure out why her slide show is out of order, so there are times where you have to struggle to hear what she is saying. There's an amusing moment in the talk when she has to talk about Renoir's illegitimate children, and quite understandably, the word "illegitimate" trips her up several times. It's extremely cute. Anyhoo, yes, my brain got tripped up by the accent and some parts that were hard to understand (mostly French words and phrases, not English) and my brain just shut down. I should note that it's a great lecture and has a lot of moving historical parts from which a lot of complexity emerges from what appears to be a simple historical narrative. Viriditas (talk) 20:32, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Continents by distance from Cody, Wyoming and Kentville, Nova Scotia?

Can anyone list the continents from Cody, Wyoming by distance, and also Kentville, Nova Scotia (other than the continent they're in, both of them North America)? Thanks. 67.215.28.226 (talk) 19:19, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Google maps can. Find Cody or Kentville, right click and select "Measure distance". Left click on a second point to which you want the distance. You can then drag the second point around until you're happy. --Wrongfilter (talk) 20:47, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I want you to find the closest routes to other continents from Cody, Wyoming and Kentville, Nova Scotia, then list them by distance. Do your best! 67.215.28.226 (talk) 02:23, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You're the one that wants to know, so it behooves you to work on it. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots02:35, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Okay. 67.215.28.226 (talk) 03:08, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Soccer goal support

Could the elbow supports of the old goals, which differ from the 'pole' ones placed behind them, because they were located inside the structure hypothetically be in the way of the ball, and prevent the ball from entering the goal? They were perfectly approved, so in theory this question should not arise, but they were still a 'foreign body', were they not? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.44.47.7 (talk) 20:42, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Which side of the goal line are they on? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots22:07, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Opening the link on the right, there is the enlarged image. They are basically at the top, at the intersection of the posts. I think they're made of iron, it's called an elbow or an inverted v, whatever. https://www.google.it/search?q=porta+con+reggirete+a+gomito&client=safari&channel=iphone_bm&sxsrf=ALiCzsb6IOZ39bAGIXn8AAS1x356aQbeKQ:1668982346651&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi84aHf4737AhWohv0HHfYPD0MQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1964&bih=985&dpr=0.9#imgrc=SeNYIqHWbJHdhM — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.41.97.54 (talk) 22:17, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

No. Nanonic (talk) 22:14, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If the ball is not entering straight, but its velocity has a sideways component, it can strike the support before the entirety of the ball has passed over the goal line. This will alter its velocity, but its forward momentum is unchanged. So the ball will continue to move in as if there had been no collision, and the goal will be made, regardless of the collision with the support. (Something that – rather theoretically but not physically impossible – may make a difference in the outcome is the goalkeeper successfully intercepting the ball on its altered course before the goal is made, while their attempt would have failed for the original course. Note that this could theoretically also happen through the incoming ball contacting the fabric net.)  --Lambiam 08:41, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

November 21

Pug nose

I'm trying to find a picture (photo or illustration is fine) of a pug nose as seen on humans. All the images I've found by web search are of dogs. I did manage to find some verbal descriptions of the human kind, but a pic would be helpful. Is a pug nose on a human female usually considered ugly? It came up in a book I'm reading, thus the picture hunt. Any suggestions? Thanks. 2601:648:8200:990:0:0:0:4775 (talk) 02:23, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Just do an image search for "person with pug nose". --jpgordon𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇 05:00, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! I had looked for human with pug nose and got only dogs. Person with pug nose found mostly dogs but did find some humans, which helped. The person in this one looks perfectly fine imho. 2601:648:8200:990:0:0:0:4775 (talk) 06:26, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Do that search recommended by Jpgordon WITH the quote marks. It makes a difference. HiLo48 (talk) 06:50, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Or try searching for "turned-up nose" or "button nose" which are more usually used for humans; pug being a type of dog, it would be a bit rude to apply the name to a person. Alansplodge (talk) 13:24, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Rude? Not really: in the original meaning relevant to the dog (says the OED), the word dates back to (at least) the 16th century and was a term of endearment, applied to a person, doll, or other valued 'bauble': it was applied to the dogs (as 'pug-dog') because they were a miniature breed, had an affectionate nature, and made good pets. Other, probably unconnected dialectical meanings included a name applied to various small animals, including monkeys (which have flat-nosed faces), and a reference to something (or someone) 'short and stumpy, a dwarf', all of which may have been concatenated and from which the specific term 'pug-nose(d)' may have emerged. In short, it has been applied to these short-nosed dogs, but does not derive from them.
One wonders what the dog breed's original name and meaning in China was/is. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.217.47.60 (talk) 02:33, 22 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The page for pug on the Chinese Wikipedia is 巴哥犬 (pinyin bāgēquǎn). The last character is a generic Mandarin term for "dog" mainly used in compounds, and according to Wiktionary one can also simply use 巴哥 (bāgē). However, this is a borrowing of English pug, so it cannot be the traditional name. The Chinese Wikipedia gives 哈巴狗 (hǎbagǒu or hàbagǒu) as a former name, which according to Wiktionary can mean "pug" but also "Pekingese". The last character is another generic term for "dog", and the first two mean "to walk with crooked legs". As before, one can just use 哈巴 (hǎba or hàba) to refer to a pug. However, there is a theory that this term is actually a borrowing from a Mongolian word khaba meaning "pug" (possibly ultimately of onomatopoeic origin), and that the verb sense is derived from that, as if in English we'd say of someone who walks with crooked legs that they tend "to pug".  --Lambiam 09:25, 22 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting. Thank you, Lambiam. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.217.47.60 (talk) 17:05, 22 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Regardless of the interesting etymology, searching "turned-up nose" results in a whole lot more images of human noses, which is what the OP was seeking. Alansplodge (talk) 12:55, 22 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

World Cup matches officiated by women

Is it known which World Cup matches will be officiated by Stéphanie Frappart, Salima Mukansanga and Yoshimi Yamashita? Neither 2022 FIFA World Cup nor 2022 FIFA World Cup officials seem to clarify that. 212.180.235.46 (talk) 21:20, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Many sports competitions and leagues do not like to publicly announce who is going to officiate specific games that far in advance, for protection and security reasons. I'm assuming FIFA is probably one of these competitions. It's one thing to publicly announce the entire set of 36 referees, 69 assistant referees and 24 video match officials. But it would be quite another matter to give weeks advance notice that this specific referee is going to officiate this specific game between Team X and Team Y. Zzyzx11 (talk) 05:58, 22 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. And for matches after the first round, assignments are decided just before the matches, as these are based on performance in first-round matches as well as geographic considerations. I see that the fourth official in the just completed Poland/Mexico match was Frappart. Xuxl (talk) 18:57, 22 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

November 23

If I remember correctly, the Tango was also the official ball of the old European Cup finals for a while. If so, for how many years? 93.41.97.54 (talk) 13:05, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Closest continent from Kentville?

What's the closest continent from Kentville, Nova Scotia (other than North America)? 67.215.28.226 (talk) 19:28, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You were told last time you asked such a question how to figure it out yourself. --jpgordon𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇 19:46, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That was here. Do you understand how to use Google maps for measuring distances?  --Lambiam 19:51, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Okay. 67.215.28.226 (talk) 19:57, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]