Originally Answered:

After how long did you notice your antidepressant working?

Was supposed to be 2 weeks, it ended up being 4 for me. Zoloft. FWIW. Have since moved to Lexapro.

Presupposition (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

http://eecoppock.info/Presupposi…

Simple clauses have presuppositions. For example, The current king of France is bald presupposes that there is a current king of France.

If you do various things to a clause, like negate it, question it, or say it’s unlikely, the claim of the clause is no longer affirmed. But the presupposition still remains intact. So I can negate The current king of France is bald, and say that The current king of France is not bald at all.

But the presupposition that there is a current king of France still survives. That’s called projection of the presupposition. If X +> Y (X presupposes Y), then Not X +> Y. You need to say something different to the clause, to say “that doesn’t make sense, there is no current king of France”.

Some combinations of clauses do not project: not all the presuppositions survive. Working out how and why is the projection problem. For example:

If there is a knave, then the knave stole the tarts.

There is a knave +> … There is a knave.

If there is a knave, then the knave stole the tarts +> There is a knave? Obviously not: the presupposition of a hypothesis can’t be projected, precisely because it is a hypothesis.

The conditions under which projection happens are messy, and it’s 11:15 pm, so you can go to the links to work out what the debate is about.

NSFW, and rather instructive in attitudes towards anal sex as punishment.

There was a threat made by Georgios Karaiskakis, the foul mouthed general of the Greek War of Independence, that I’ve just discovered. It has a kind of magnificent menace to it.

For it to even be intelligible in English, I have to cite from Nick Nicholas’ answer to What are some weird expressions?

Θα μου κλάσεις τ’ αρχίδια. “You will fart on my balls.” The meaning of this is: your threats to me are meaningless, as I am in a position of complete dominance over you.

A particular positioning of bodies is presupposed by this adage, as an expression of traditional male dominance (stereotypically associated with Greeks by non-Greeks, and with Ottomans by Greeks themselves). In such a positioning of bodies, the phrase content would be a plausible if impotent expression of repudiation of such dominance.

That oblique enough for you?

Good. Because in this answer, I won’t be so oblique.

Karaiskakis sent once a message of defiance to the foe. His message of defiance can be paraphrased nobly and decorously, as something like, I don’t know,

“If I should live, then shall they fear my wrath.
If I should die, why should I care a whit?”

But Karaiskakis was not a decorous kind of guy.

What he actually demanded his scribe write down is:

Αν ζήσω, θα τους γαμήσω.
Αν πεθάνω, θα μου κλάσουν τον πούτσον.

Ready?

Remember: this is the notion of anal sex among heterosexuals as punishment. As seen in prison stereotypes.

“If I live, I will fuck them [in the ass].
If I die, they can fart on my dick.”

The primary meaning of “they can fart on my dick” is “I don’t give a shit about them, they can’t do anything to hurt me anymore.”

But it is the “I don’t give a shit” of magnificent indifference, of someone who is already fucking you in the ass as punishment.

WHILE DEAD.

So the worst you can do to them is fart on their dick.

It’s repulsive. It’s homophobic. It’s brutal.

But you gotta admit. It has a certain crude effectiveness.

Ah. How do I answer this without getting myself into massive trouble.

The Annika Schauer is wise. But let me elaborate on the scenario a bit, and let me answer about whether it is appropriate, and whether it is desirable for Anon to date any.

What are the rules for a heterosexual date-seeking male of any age to interact with any women in any context?

• Be respectful
• Do not harass people
• Do not assume people are there for your entertainment
• Do not assume people will be interested back
• Do not make the space uncomfortable for your peers
• Remember that they actually are your peer first, and your potential sex partner or mate second

To which one can add, in this particular context,

• Be aware of power differentials
• Be aware of your own feelings of entitlement
• Be aware that what these 18+ females in your courses are after, even if they are interested in a relationship, and even if they are interested in a relationship with you, might be very different from what you’re after

Let us hypothetically, OP, assume you’re in a class with three women. Under the expert tutelage of the magisterial lecturer Nick Nicholas, expounding forth on the mysteries of Historical Linguistics. (Hey, why does OP get to be the only guy daydreaming?) Let us further, if dangerously, assume they are:

• Sierra Spaulding,
• Mary C. Gignilliat, and
• Sam Murray (referring to Sam Murray’s answer to I tend to love men older than me and they always love me too. most times, they are usually married and I do not want to break their marriages?, with her permission)

Let us yet further assume that all three of them will remain on speaking terms with me after the conclusion of this hypothetical. Which is not a given.

Now, OP, me old china, Dr Nick has no traffic with what his students get up to on their own time, so long as everyone’s keeping their hands above the desk, and is listening raptly to his dorky jokes and amazing accounts of random language changes.

Dr Nick is concerned that his students feel comfortable and safe in his class; and he really, really hopes that he doesn’t get called in to deal with any disruptions to that.

OP looks langurously around at Sierra and Sarah.

Mary is in fact maybe possibly looking for someone to have a good time with, when she’s not slaving away at the landscaping biz, or trying to make head or tail of the history of Tocharian. Mary is astonishingly awesome; she happens to be more age-appropriate for OP, as our culture sets it out; and Mary has a very good asshole detector, so Dr Nick (who, eh, knows Mary socially through Quora) would have no concerns that Mary would look after herself, and would not allow herself to feel unsafe.

OP, we’ll assume, is not even noticing Mary, because he’s fucking blind or something. A possibility Sierra rightly puts forward in her response. If OP is not even noticing Mary, what’s OP really after?

Sierra? Sierra wants to be regarded as a peer by her peers, and treated with respect. And deserves nothing less. Sierra would be nothing but creeped out by OP putting the moves on her, and knows that no meaningful relationship would develop out of it, because it would not be a relation of peers, or equals, or anything but sexual, and she’s not coming to Dr Nick’s amazing lectures to be leered at like a piece of meat, thank you very much. And seriously, what does OP think they’d have in common to talk about.

Dr Nick (who, eh, knows Sierra socially through Quora) would advise that OP not even try to go there.

Sarah? In this hypothetical, Sarah is not yet giddily engaged, and their fiancé is not about to come out and beat OP up. Sarah, no less than Sierra, wants to be regarded as a peer by their peers, and treated with respect. And deserves nothing less. Sarah in this hypothetical and stage in their life, as it happens, is in fact quite OK for OP to objectify them, and interact with them as a potential sex partner.

So long as they get to objectify him right back. Get prepared for some confronting conversations with them, OP. Sarah is not interested in someone who’s got ridiculous expectations about what’s actually likely to happen. Sarah is not interested in liars, cheaters, or assholes; and if you’re only interested in one thing with Sarah, well then, they get to be interested in only one thing with you, right back. And you’re not any more likely to be the guy that Sarah ends up with as her mate, than you are with Sierra—for what I think are ultimately the same reasons. You don’t have that much in common.

(Dr Nick is respecting Sarah’s pronoun preferences btw, because he, eh, knows Sarah socially through Quora; and if OP doesn’t respect Sarah’s pronoun preferences, he’s not getting far with them.)

So, OP. You can view anyone you like as a potential sex partner or mate. Not during Dr Nick’s class, of course, he’ll likely take a dim view of that. But still.

But. Are you prepared for the consequences?

Read Logan R. Kearsley’s answer to How do linguists view programming languages? Vote #1 Logan R. Kearsley.

What he said.

Supplemental:

At very very most, a linguist programmer will see YACC rules specifying a programming language’s syntax, and think “Oh, how cute. Kinda like phrase structure rules, but ludicrously simpler.”

Or, look at the three flavours of semantics of computer languages, procedural, denotational and axiomatic, and find hilarity in their mismatch to human language semantics. It’s almost like the semantics of computer languages is modelling nothing more than the narrow concerns of a Turing machine’s universe.

Oh wait…

If a linguist gets to either YACC or axiomatic semantics, btw, he’s delving a lot deeper into actual Computer Science than any programmer under 40 that I’ve met.

Vote #1 Logan R. Kearsley.

There are two problematic premises in this question.

The first is that the primary semiotic of the hammer and sickle is “mass random murder of dissidents”, rather than “common ownership of the means of production”. The legacy of Communism may have been tainted by what Lenin and Stalin did; but that does not make the hammer and sickle a hate symbol banned the world over. In some Eastern European countries, at most (Hammer and sickle – Wikipedia). And there are still plenty of Communist parties left in the world.

The second is that this is an emoji. As in, cutesy symbol intended for SMS use, promulgated by mobile phone manufacturers in Japan because they got lazy about rich text encoding, and sanctioned by the Unicode Consortium in a move that I will never ever forgive them for.

But the Hammer and Sickle symbol is not an emoji. It was not brought in by phone manufacturers, and it was not intended for Communist member parties to send cutesy messages to each other.

The Hammer and Sickle, U+262D, belongs to the Unicode Miscellaneous Symbols block. You can discern why it is there, by looking at its immediate neighbours:

☠☡☢☤☥☦☧☨☩☪☫☬☭☮☯ (U+2630 through U+263F)

Five medical/hazard symbols, followed by eight religious symbols, followed by the Hammer and Sickle, the Peace Sign, and the Yin Yang symbol. These are various symbols of creeds and ideologies that have been prominent in recent years. The Hammer and Sickle belongs there for the same reason the Peace Sign belongs there. And the Peace Sign is not there as an endorsement of nuclear disarmament.

Although I note with merriment (Peace symbols – Wikipedia) that the South African government tried to ban the Peace Sign in 1973, because it was used by opponents of apartheid.

The pleasant surprise when I started on the antidepressants: I was still me. I wasn’t zonked. (At least, not then.)

I took meds for generalised anxiety, and they definitely stopped me from panicking on the way to work.

What made me realise they were helping was the first time I absent-mindedly sang while I was at work. That hadn’t happened in quite a while.

Originally Answered:

What would a Trump presidency mean for Australia?

Already posted this in https://www.quora.com/What-will-…

Bob Carr was NSW State premier for a very long time, but always wanted to be Foreign Minister. He even managed to be one for a few months. He’s obsessed with American politics, as any Foreign Minister has to be, and almost creamed his jocks when he was on a panel with PJ O’Rourke recently.

Anyway. He was lapping up the limelight on the Australian govt TV news on election night. His assessment? A lot of countries in the region are going to be seeking out Australia, the only alliance Trump hasn’t dissed yet, to work out what the hell is going on with Trump. And Australia itself is going to very quietly reevaluate how tightly it is committed to the alliance, and whether having Australian generals take orders from Commander In Chief Trump is really such a great idea.

It’s a self indulgent answer, but then again, it’s a self indulgent question.

The Greek laiko tradition (bouzouki pop) came from the Greek rebetiko tradition (bouzouki blues). The rebetiko tradition was singer-songwriters, often in jail, singing about getting high or my woman done me wrong. At its best (and that certainly includes Vamvakaris), the lyrics are incandescent. But they’re still singer-songwriter lyrics.

Laiko typically has seperate lyricists. The lyricists are often bona fide poets. And you can tell.

Two songs. The first is a bona fide pop song, that most Greeks will get up and dance a stern zeibekiko to. Bear that in mind. Lyrics: Alkis Alkeos Άλκης Αλκαίος. Music: Thanos Mikroutsikos. Singer: Dimitris Mitropanos.

Rosa. 1996. stixoi.info: Ρόζα For length, I’ll just give my translation here.

My lips, parched and thirsty,
seek water on the asphalt.
Trucks go past me,
and you tell me there’s a downpour coming
and drag me into a damp cabaret.

We’re pacing together on the same road,
but our cells are separate.
We wander through a magical city.
I don’t want to know what we’re looking for anymore,
as long as you’ll grant me two kisses.

You gamble me on the roulette wheel, and lose me
in a nightmarish fairy tale.
My voice is now an insect’s voice.
My life is a climbing vine:
you cut me down and throw me into the abyss.

How need turns into history!
How history turns into silence!
Why do you look at me, Rosa, so numb?
Forgive me for not understanding
what the computers and the numbers are saying.

My love made of coal and sulfur,
look how time has changed you!
Trucks pass over us,
and I, in the fog and downpour,
sleep starving by your side.

RIP, Alkis Alkeos. RIP, Teacher Dimitris.

---

The second is from an even more poetry-ridden source, the songs that came out towards the end of the Greek Dictatorship (1967–74). It was a time when censorship encouraged you to be obscure; and even if you weren’t alluding to politics, the population was inclined to read it in anyway.

The lyricist and poet is Manos Eleftheriou, Μάνος Ελευθερίου. I’ve already cited his Birds of the Netherworld in Which poem or song best represents Greece in your opinion?

Music: Yannis Markopoulos. First performance (and there have been many): the Cretan folk singer Charalampos Garganourakis (Μπάμπης (Χαράλαμπος) Γαργανουράκης βιογραφικό)

The Lost Words and Years. 1974. stixoi.info: Τα λόγια και τα χρόνια

The lost words and years,
and the sorrows covered by smoke—
Exile has found them reconciled as brothers.
The sudden joys that have come to me
were lightning in a black forest,
as were the thoughts I dared have about you.

And I speak to you in courtyards and balconies,
and God’s lost gardens.
And I keep thinking that the nightingales are coming,
together with the lost words and years,
everywhere where you used to be,
and now in the cold and snow.

Fate and the Season had set it down
that I should cast a line out in this world,
and that the night should turn a thousand years.
That he should sing at the end of the feast,
he who has known no kin,
and knock on the door of sorrow.

They were no stopped clock
in a ruined deserted household,
those roads that have led me out to wait.
The words I do not know, I bind them for you
with the people who have witnessed the evil,
and have it embroidered against their name.

He who sows tears and pain
reaps the ocean at dawn.
Black birds show him the way.
And he has a drawing near his shoulder,
a secret, fateful sign
that he has escaped Hades and the World.

There’s more than a few Greeks scratching their heads now. That’s not the lyrics they know.

Indeed they aren’t. The song came out after the Athens Polytechnic uprising, in 1973, when the tanks rolled in and crushed the protesters. People assumed that’s what Eleftheriou was alluding to, and the lyrics were tweaked to make the allusion slightly more explicit.

The sensibility of the verse was not cheapened.

He who sows tears and pain
reaps death at dawn.
Black birds show him the way.
And he has a wound near his shoulder,
a secret, fateful sign
that he has escaped Men and the Law.

Fate and the Season had set it down,
Friday night at nine,
that the night should turn a thousand years.
That he should sing at the end of the feast,
Friday the Killer’s night,
and knock on the door of the people.

Here’s Garganourakis, singing the new lyrics, 40 years on.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=m4feu5pJ52A

Can you swear without dysphemisms?

Yes: swearing involves using profane vocabulary; dysphemism involves negative, offensive terms for particular things. You can swear without dysphemisms, and indeed without having any negativity at all, through the use of profanities as positive intensifiers:

• That was a motherfucking magnificent job!
• Holy fucking shit, that felt good!
• Jesus, that guy’s a clever cunt. (That’s more a Commonwealth thing)

Can you use dysphemisms without swearing?

Yes, though it’s subtle: dysphemism is using a term that is offensive in some way, but there’s a lot of wiggle room in how. We just saw that the term can be offensive in general, but not in the particular context—like the examples above. We can also have a term that is offensive ONLY in that context.

Example? Wikipedia has an excellent one. In many cultures, using a proper name for your elders is disrespectful, and hence gives offence: it’s a dysphemism. Hey Janice, where’s lunch? instead of Hello mother, where is lunch? But it isn’t swearing: it isn’t the same as Hey bitch, where’s my food? There’s nothing profane in itself about the name Janice.