The Off Topic Topic

[Liep]

I'm already tired of the press coverage. It's not sad, he was 83 and lived all his life on vacation in castles, hardest he ever worked was tasting wine on his vineyard in France. The man had a great life.

Well he was married to Count Dracula.

They seemed happy, at least until his dementia years.

[mongers]

Beginning/end of word th? All of them. They're the same.
Mid word th? The south. In the north its V.

H as haich now. There you have a problem.

When you pronounce them your tongue and teeth are in a different positions, 'th' has the tongue pushing the back of the open teeth, F sees the teeth closer together and your tongue held back, helping to make an almost whistle sounding start as the lips purse also.  So rather different.

[mongers]

Which English accent is it that pronounces TH as F?

Estuary English? I remember mongers mentioning it once.

Probably good joke, flies over ones head. 

Yes, though probably an somewhat exaggerating form of it, think more 'East Enders' than modern East London. 

[FunkMonk]

So apparently the United States obliterated a Russian mercenary battalion in eastern Syria.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-13/u-s-strikes-said-to-kill-scores-of-russian-fighters-in-syria

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/13/russian-mercenaries-killed-us-airstrikes-syria

Bloomberg News quoted Russian sources as saying as many as 200 Russian nationals could have been killed in a clash last Wednesday and Thursday around the oil fields of Deir Ezzor region between forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad and a Kurdish-led opposition force supported by US advisers.

...

US Central Command said on Tuesday that US forces came under fire from a tank, and that they responded with three hours of intense strikes from drones and B-52 bombers against the attackers, which it described as a unit of 300 to 500 fighters.

Hot Damn I wonder when was the last time the US Air Force killed that many Russians

I AM AT DEF CON BONER. THIS IS CRYSTAL PALACE. BONER IS FULLY ERECT

[Grey Fox]

So apparently the United States obliterated a Russian mercenary battalion in eastern Syria.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-13/u-s-strikes-said-to-kill-scores-of-russian-fighters-in-syria

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/13/russian-mercenaries-killed-us-airstrikes-syria

Bloomberg News quoted Russian sources as saying as many as 200 Russian nationals could have been killed in a clash last Wednesday and Thursday around the oil fields of Deir Ezzor region between forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad and a Kurdish-led opposition force supported by US advisers.

...

US Central Command said on Tuesday that US forces came under fire from a tank, and that they responded with three hours of intense strikes from drones and B-52 bombers against the attackers, which it described as a unit of 300 to 500 fighters.

Hot Damn I wonder when was the last time the US Air Force killed that many Russians

I AM AT DEF CON BONER. THIS IS CRYSTAL PALACE. BONER IS FULLY ERECT

God, I love this over reaction.

[garbon]

I just got some super fun spam.

My name is Mary James. am 75 yrs old of age and I
stay in New York City, New York USA. I am a good merchant, I have
several industrial companies and good share in various banks in the
world.

I spend all my life on investment and corporate business. Along
the way I lost my husband and two beautiful kids in a fatal accident
that occurred in November 2003. Ever since I lost my family, its been
difficult to sleep or get enough rest. Later in the year 2004 February
I was sent a diagnosis letter after a medical check up, confirming from
my personal doctor that I have lung cancer, which can easily
end my life at anytime.

I found it uneasy to survive myself, because a lot of investment
cannot be run and manage by me again. I quickly call up a
pastor/prophet to give me positive thinking on this solution as
my adviser. He minister to me to share my properties ,wealth, to
motherless baby/orphanage homes/people that need money for survivor
both student that need money for schooling, business woman and man for
their investment and for future rising.So therefore I am writing this
letter to people who are really in need of help from me both student
in college to contact me urgently, so that I can make an available
preparation on that.

I also have a good loan master agent that I have discuss with to
release free loan offer to you which you don't need to pay the
loan back,cos it's a free loan master offer. Especially women
of the day, who are divorced by their husband, who cannot survive the
mist of feeding their self, please contact me and stop weeping.

Probably let me know what you really need the money for and if you can
still help me to distribute money to nearest orphanage homes near your
town. May the lord bless you as you reach me, please to remind you,
don't belongs to scammers or any act of fraudulent on Internet.

[Admiral Yi]

Beginning/end of word th? All of them. They're the same.
Mid word th? The south. In the north its V.

H as haich now. There you have a problem.

+1

Any other answers?  Perhaps it's not a regional thing, but an individual one, like a lisp?  AFAICT it's not a class thing.

[garbon]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/14/transgender-woman-breastfeed-health

Transgender woman able to breastfeed in first documented case

A 30-year-old transgender woman has been able to breastfeed her child, the first ever case of induced lactation in a transgender woman to be documented in academic literature.

Doctors said the case shows "modest but functional lactation can be induced in transgender women". The account was published in Transgender Health.

Tamar Reisman of Mount Sinai hospital in New York, one of the doctors who reported the case, said: "Transgender medicine is becoming part of mainstream medicine. We're getting more evidence-based data, we're getting more standardized care, we're getting more reproductive options."

The transgender woman went to doctors when her partner was five months pregnant. She said her partner did not want to breastfeed the couple's child, so she hoped to take on the responsibility.

Reisman and Zil Goldstein wrote that the woman was being treated for insomnia and anxiety, but otherwise appeared to be a "pleasant, well-nourished, well-developed woman".

The patient had taken hormone therapy for six years, but had not had gender reassignment or breast augmentation before she approached doctors. Reisman and Goldstein used a framework known to induce lactation in cisgender women who had not experienced a pregnancy to promote the patient's lactation.

The patient took a gradually increasing regimen of the female hormones progesterone and estradiol, stimulated her chest with a breast milk pump, and took domperidone, a nausea medication known to increase milk production.

Domperidone is used internationally but it is not approved in the US, because in some intravenous instances it produced cardiac arrhythmias, cardiac arrest and sudden death. It is licensed to treat nausea in the UK. The patient obtained the drug from Canada.

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Reisman said that with an optimized hormone regimen it may be possible to induce lactation without domperidone, because chest stimulation naturally increases the breast milk-producing hormone prolactin.

"There have been self-reported cases online of transgender woman trying DIY regiments to induce breastfeeding, but this is the first case of induced functional lactation in the academic literature," Reisman said. There are also cases of transgender men carrying pregnancies and breastfeeding, she said.

However, Reisman said the case has also attracted questions about whether men could now breastfeed. "That, implicitly, is saying that you see transgender women as cisgender men, which is transphobic," she said.

Joshua Safer, an endocrinologist at Boston Medical Center not involved in the case, told the New Scientist the report is "a very big deal".

"Many transgender women are looking to have as many of the experiences of non-transgender women as they can, so I can see this will be extremely popular," Safer said.

The bit I put in bold seems a bit much.

[Valmy]

This "historical" RPG by this Gamergater developer has come out, Kingdom Come Deliverance.

I am looking forward to it, not that I will have time to play it anytime soon.

I don't get the no-PoC thing. The Cumans are in the game fighting for the Hungarians. Or are central Asian nomads not PoC enough? I never understand these stupid terms.

Edit: But now that I think about it there was this huge outrage about Witcher 3 for the same reason and hardly anybody remembers, so probably a non-outrage non-controversy.

[Valmy]

I won't pay a cent for any painting.

Just steal one Mono, that is what you do.

[Eddie Teach]

I guess you really can milk anything with nipples.

[Habbaku]

Can you pirate a painting?

[Valmy]

The bit I put in bold seems a bit much.

Some people clearly do not comprehend the notion that sex and gender are different things. Surely talking bout people who share a biological sex being able to do the same thing is not transphobic since we are not talking about gender. Or not. Fuck if I know.

[Josquius]

Can you pirate a painting?

Definitely.

Though how this applies to old works which by rights should be out of copyright is a mystery. I'm pretty sure they do have some protection around them.

[The Brain]

Can you pirate a painting?

Definitely.

Though how this applies to old works which by rights should be out of copyright is a mystery. I'm pretty sure they do have some protection around them.

It can be hard to take a photo of the painting that is good enough for reproduction (it may be in a vault, a private home, a museum with a photography ban...). Any photos of the painting are under their own copyright I assume.