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March 27

The seventies, East Side

In a book I'm reading comes this text:

I called Lou at home. He had a house on the east side in the seventies.

I wondered what this "seventies" refers to. It doesn't mean the 1970s. The book's set in New York so I assume it's a certain part of the East Side (Manhattan). Googling has been no help. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:19, 27 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If it doesn't mean the 1970s, then it might well mean the numbered streets. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:21, 27 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely the numbered streets. It's common in writings about NYC to refer to things like this. See for example: https://www.townhouseexperts.com/nyc-brownstone-history-the-upper-west-side-in-the-brownstone-era/ where the author says "Enrico Caruso and Arturo Toscanini, for example, were in the West 70s long before the Metropolitan Opera arrived. Perhaps what drew these greats was (at least in part) the picturesque aspect of the neighborhood." --Khajidha (talk) 23:06, 27 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

To be explicit, it means 70th to 79th St.

Years ago (to be exact, it was 1995) I emailed a friend in New York to ask, of our curiosity, whether people generally respected the name change from Pan Am Building to MetLife Building or if they still used the old name. He decided to poll some friends. To avoid biasing the question, he did not use either name, but described it by location:

"Imagine you're standing on Park Av. in the 50s, looking south. What is the most prominent building you see?"

And one person began his answer by saying:

"You can't mean the Pan Am Building, because that wasn't built till the '60s."

In other words, my friend meant 50th to 59th St., but his friend interpreted it as the 1950s—but he still got an answer. (The results of that little poll, by the way, were 8–2 in favor of the old name. But, as I say, that was in 1995.)

--69.159.8.46 (talk) 18:46, 28 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The joke answer shows 1) that the person making it was aware of both meanings, 2) knew what was actually meant, and 3) was a smart ass. --Khajidha (talk) 20:35, 28 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I have just been assured that the person wasn't joking. --69.159.8.46 (talk) 02:18, 29 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah that would be the Upper East Side or if further east, Yorkville, Manhattan. 2601:648:8202:96B0:E0CB:579B:1F5:84ED (talk) 23:40, 27 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yorkville is generally considered part of the Upper East Side. As Yorkville extends from East 79th Street to East 96th Street, a house there is unlikely, though, to be referred to as being "in the seventies". --Lambiam 03:31, 28 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, all. I thought it was probably something sorta like this. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:23, 29 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

March 28

TW Kempton

I just bought a bottle of TW Kempton Blood Orange Gin Liqueur from Alko. However, googling for "TW Kempton" brings up https://www.twkempton.co.uk/, which appears to be a clothes manufacturer. Are there two different companies called TW Kempton or is it the same company? And if they are two different companies, are they related? JIP | Talk 19:11, 28 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It might help to know your location. It might help to know what Alko is--on googling; it appears to be a Finnish liquor store. Business registries and copyright records would make quick work of this question. Temerarius (talk) 19:52, 28 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm in Finland, and yes, Alko is a Finnish liquor store. JIP | Talk 19:59, 28 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

See Alko. Alansplodge (talk) 20:48, 28 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

TW Kempton (gin) is a brand name used by Intercontinental Brands (ICB) Limited of Harrogate - you have to enter your date of birth to enter their website which is here. The Leicester based clothing manufacturer calls itself TW Kempton (Corporate Clothing) Limited, presumably in an (unsuccessful) attempt to avoid confusion. My guess is that neither company wanted the expense of a legal battle over the name, but who knows? Alansplodge (talk) 21:01, 28 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The TW Kempton, maker of outer knitwear, is probably older than the TW Kempton random intercontinental brand name for gin liqueurs. See this old ad. But is there a risk of confusion? Might someone aiming to buy a ballistic vest accidentally end up with a bottle of blood orange gin liqueur? --Lambiam 21:23, 28 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I don't know about laws in Britain, but here in the US such matching brand names are really only prohibited when there is a reasonable degree of possible confusion by the public. In my state we have Lowes Foods and Lowe's, both were founded and are headquartered in the state. --Khajidha (talk) 21:29, 28 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Those two were started by the same family; the father started the hardware store chain and the son started the grocery store chain. --Jayron 32 18:38, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. So they are two different companies that just happen to be both named TW Kempton? That's strange, because it seems like an unusual name. Perhaps kind of like Renault the car company and Renault the liquor company just happen to share a name, because Renault is a common surname in France? JIP | Talk 22:11, 28 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It is an unusual name. The brand name for the gin liqueur appears to be recent. Advertizing agency the fabl posted on their Facebook page (March 10): "Intercontinental Brands - ICB approached the team and asked us to help them create branding for their new botanical gin liqueur brand TW Kempton. The team were thrilled to help out and produced some great branding, original illustrations and these fabulous labels! 🍸" The earliest posting on the Facebook page of TW Kempton (the ginny one) is dated November 15, 2019. --Lambiam 12:02, 29 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Trademarks in the UK are registered in 1 or more of 45 classes (which are common to WIPO countries); the classes correspond with different types of good or services. Having a trademark in one class protects mostly in that class (maybe in others, but that's a bigger ask). Searching the UK's Intellectual Property Office only finds one UK trademark with this name, UK00002182722, for class 33 (alcoholic beverages) filed by ICB in November 1998. I can't see a registered trademark for anyone for class 25 (clothing etc.) Lots of businesses, particularly smaller ones, don't protect their name with a trademark registration - it doesn't mean someone could register that trademark for class 25 and extract money from the clothing company. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 21:46, 29 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The firm TW Kempton of Leicester has not trademarked its own name, but holds several trademarks in class 25, such as for their WOOLLY PULLY and MILLER RAYNER. --Lambiam 06:37, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

March 29

Just how difficult was it to find pizza, lasagna, and ravioli in the United States back in early 1881?

Just how difficult was it to find pizza, lasagna, and ravioli in the United States back in early 1881? I'm wondering about this in a hypothetical alternate history scenario where alien space bats put Garfield the Cat's brain in James A. Garfield's body right after the latter's inauguration as US President in March 1881. Garfield the Cat is, of course, a huge fan of pizza, lasagna, and ravioli and would undoubtedly be craving it as "President Garfield" in this scenario. Futurist110 (talk) 06:15, 29 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Pizza#History tells us that "The country's first pizzeria, Lombardi's, opened in 1905". So commercial pizza might be a challenge. HiLo48 (talk) 06:26, 29 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Looking at Italian Americans, the 1870s were the turning point for immigration, with twice as many immigrants coming in that decade (46,296) than the previous five (22,627). However, it wasn't really until after World War II that non-Italian Americans were readily eating Italian cuisine, with even Italy not caring too much about pizza until the 20th century. Italian American immigrants sometimes had trouble getting ahold of the stuff they needed to make traditional foods, though canned tomatoes did start to appear at some point after the Civil War. That said, I have no idea how easy it'd be to get the pasta for the lasagna or the equipment to properly make it. Of the three items you asked about, ravioli would be the easiest to make.

If I were running a Tabletop role-playing game set in the northeastern US in the 1880s, I don't think I'd let the party buy any of that stuff from Non-player characters (except maybe ravioli from an Italian grandmother as reward for rescuing her). However, if an Italian immigrant Player character with any skill points in both cooking and engineering set out to make them, I would not make them roll to see if they could do it (though I might make them roll to see how good it turns out if they're trying to use the food to get someone's favor or else run a business). That said, since you're throwing alien space bats into the picture, all bets are off. Ian.thomson (talk) 06:57, 29 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I guess the question is about procuring ready-made products, but if employing someone to cook these up was an option, there would have been hope also in the 19th century. Pizza dough is essentially the same as the dough for leavened bread and can be made at home. Spinning it into a sheet like accomplished pizza makers do is tricky; beginners are probably better off by rolling it out on a flat surface, using a roller. In any case, home production of pizza is entirely feasible if you have the ingredients, a kitchen and an oven. Fresh pasta dough is also not particularly difficult – in fact easy – to make at home. For authentic Italian pasta you want semolina made of durum wheat, but other hard, not too finely milled wheat flour is probably good enough. Once you have the dough, you can roll it out in sheets, so home-cooked lasagna would not have been a problem. It is also not difficult to cut up a dough sheet in stripes, giving you fettuccine/tagliatelle. Home production of maccheroni and other pasta shapes formed by extrusion, without pasta machine, would have been problematic. However, macaroni and cheese (from factory-produced pasta) was already then a popular dish. --Lambiam 11:34, 29 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You could buy both “imported” and “domestic” Macaroni, Spaghetti and Vermicelli from 1890s Sears catalogues as a matter of course (e.g. 1897; note that the generic term “pasta” wasn’t used at the time). The 1883 British Army Navy Store catalogue also has a variety of Macaroni. Cheers ⌘ _hugarheimur 18:47, 29 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

More information at How Italian Cuisine Became as American as Apple Pie (being pedantic though, apple pies are English [1]). Alansplodge (talk) 19:04, 29 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The concept of pasta/noodles (if not the name) was well known in America almost since the founding, Thomas Jefferson became fond of pasta while in France, and introduced to the U.S. an early form of baked macaroni and cheese as early as the late 1700s; as noted in that article recipes for it were appearing in cook books as early as 1824. As pasta extrusion machines were not common or cheap in the early 1800s, it was probably a recipe for upper-class people, but it was known. This article notes that the romantic story of Jefferson bringing pasta to America is, while true, probably not the source, as English aristocrats had been eating macaroni in England half a century earlier, and those that emigrated to the colonies brought the practice with them. That same article notes that the first American pasta factory opened in 1798, and that pasta was available as a working-class foodstuff by the Civil War (1860s). While Italian Americans may have introduced particularly Italian was of serving it, it certainly existed as a common foodstuff in the U.S. long before the first major waves of Italian immigrants. It also bears noting that the particular style of Italian-American cooking is mostly distinct from actual Italian cooking, it is an offshoot of some particular southern Italian styles (predominantly Sicily and Naples) but even then, dishes Americans know as distinctly Italian were generally invented, in their familiar forms, in America and would be unknown in Italy. --Jayron 32 14:07, 30 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Exercise

How can I find out who put this sentence on this article plus the reference(4)? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise In terms of health benefits, the amount of recommended exercise depends upon the goal, the type of exercise, and the age of the person. Even doing a small amount of exercise is healthier than doing none.[4] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.151.100.40 (talk) 06:56, 29 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You can use Wikipedia:WikiBlame to find out. Ian.thomson (talk) 06:58, 29 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There exists a tool by the name of WikiBlame which can find the addition (or removal) of text in an article's history. Go to "View History" and find the link near the top that reads "Find addition/removal" or select the (alternate) link for a shinier interface. Then fill out the form and hit "submit". Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails. The standard manual way (which WikiBlame mimics) is a "binary search" of the revision history where you narrow down the range of revisions which changed by halving the distance between them, until you locate the exact instance you're looking for. This can be time-consuming when done manually on a busy, large article. Elizium23 (talk) 06:59, 29 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I've tried to find it but I can't as I did this before. If someone could please help me that would be greatly appreciated? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8003:7427:6B00:C832:21D6:C29D:32DD (talk) 06:17, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Using WikiBlame on the second sentence ("Even doing a small amount of exercise is healthier than doing none.") reveals the text was added in revision #925914819 by User:WhatamIdoing on November 12th, 2019. —TheHardestAspectOfCreatingAnAccountIsAlwaysTheUsername: posted at 07:28, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

March 30

Plagiarism

Hi, I've recently inserted a quote at UD Quester#Name from this source - I've tried putting it in my own words however I'm useless with this sort of thing so didn't know if my version was okay or whether it can be better done so that the text isn't in that persons words,
Thanks, –Davey2010^Talk 15:13, 30 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If you mean the part 'The name "Quester" means a need to develop and provide trucks that pursue (quest) the needs of customers', isn't that (almost), word by word, a literal translation of the Japanese text – except that the "emerging countries" (新興国) have disappeared? Apart from avoiding plagiarism or copyright infringement, you'd do well to paraphrase this, because it is not terribly understandable. A name cannot be a need. In the Japanese sentence there is only one occurrence (ニーズ) but you have two, so that seems to be off. What does not help is that the verb quest is transitive here, which is archaic English, meaning "to be on a quest for". (As in, "What seekest thou? I quest wisdom.") It is not your fault, but it is also semantically strange to talk about a truck pursuing (追求) someone's needs. First off, what one pursues is a goal. That goal may be to meet the customers' needs. The needs by themselves are not a goal. And are these trucks autonomous robots? You wouldn't say that your car pursues your need to go to Tesco. What about this: "The company selected the name "Quester" to express their goal to develop a truck that is, so to speak, on a quest to meet the needs of emerging market customers." (Not great, but what can one do with such material? Better ideas remain welcome.) --Lambiam 19:39, 30 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Excuse me but I don't see the point of plagiarism: The source quotes some Mister Loic as having said: "The name" Quester "reflects the desire to develop and provide trucks that thoroughly pursue (quest) the needs of emerging market customers"

As long as you reference it it is legitimate, and in my opinion preferable, to let any citation in the original form, and the more so a citation of a citation. So why should you try and put it in your own words? Would you paraphrase Mister Churchill's "We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it." ? 2003:F5:6F07:8900:3C3A:BE11:56B2:C946 (talk) 13:24, 1 April 2020 (UTC) Marco PB[reply]

April 1

Regarding the 2016 spike in Main Page views

I was analyzing the daily pageviews for the Main Page (for an essay I may or may not end up writing) when I noticed a surprisingly large spike in traffic to the site between July 20th and August 16th, 2016, during which time the daily views of the main page more-than-tripled at one point. (Graph: https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&redirects=0&start=2016-07-01&end=2016-08-31&pages=Main_Page)

This is entirely inconsequential, but it nevertheless piqued my interest, as I could not remember any major events that occurred during this timeframe. I subsequently searched the article for 2016, but could not find any clear indicators; major events that occurred around that time either had already occurred (such as the 2016 Nice truck attack, the 2016 Turkish coup d'etat attempt, Typhoon Nepartak, and the end of the Western African Ebola virus epidemic) or occur on a regular basis (such as the 2016 Summer Olympics, which seemed like a potential candidate until I realized that A. it began on August 5th and ended on August 21st, so it doesn't match the timeframe, and B. the 2018 Winter Olympics didn't seem to cause a spike in traffic anywhere near this magnitude). The only two notable deaths on July 19th were Garry Marshall and Anthony D. Smith, which both seem unlikely candidates to cause such major interest in Wikipedia—and to my understanding, traffic from notable celebrity deaths (such as the deaths of Steve Jobs and Michael Jackson) usually subside after a day or two to begin with. Searching the Wikipedia: mainspace with the keywords "July" "19" "2016" and "July" "26" "2016" (when the traffic was greatest), and the Current Events portal, were equally unfruitful; the only event mentioned in the latter for July of 2016 that could conceivably cause this is Donald Trump being named the United States' Republican Party candidate for the 2016 election on July 19th, which I suppose could cause a jump in traffic for a day or two... but for an entire month? And why would the number of pageviews drop so suddenly between August 16th (which had ~56,000,000) and August 17th (which had ~24,000,000) if that was the cause of this? That doesn't seem to quite fit as the source of the increase in traffic.

So, for the sake of curiosity itself, does anybody know what occurred that sparked so much interest in Wikipedia during that time period? —TheHardestAspectOfCreatingAnAccountIsAlwaysTheUsername: posted at 06:24, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

According to The Signpost, the most popular articles during that period were the 2016 Olympics, Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt (Olympians) and the film Suicide Squad. You can see the relevant Signpost articles at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-08-18/Traffic report and Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-09-06/Traffic report. For more detailed lists of the top articles during the period, see Category:Top 25 Report-gadfium 08:15, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have an answer, but I suggest the possibility that Wikipedia itself, for some reason, received unusually prominent news media coverage (which tends to snowball when different news vehicles hitch themselves to the news train to avoid being left behind [to coin a metaphor]), thus prompting more people to check it out. This might explain the spike of Main Page views, rather than to specific articles proffered via web searches. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.27.39 (talk) 12:21, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Therefore, looking at Wikipedia:Press coverage 2016, we find that on 21 July, Taylor Swift’s Wikipedia Page Vandalized After Kim Kardashian, Kanye West Feud: See What the Trolls Did, but that seems unlikely to be a major preoccupation with the Anglosphere. Also on 28 July, Wikipedia is pivoting into news with its redesigned Android app, so plausibly everyone with an android phone was downloading the app? Alansplodge (talk) 17:12, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that it's clean cut and such a specific length of time (28 days = 4 weeks) suggests to me that it's not something organic; interest in something doesn't just triple for that amount of time and then drop back to exactly where it was before with no slopes; it should be some kind of bell curve. To me, this has the hallmarks of something artificial, like us counting page views differently or Google crawling the main page differently and then reverting back. Matt Deres (talk) 13:45, 2 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The 28-day period suggests to me a free-trial subscription period to something, after which most people didn't sign up to the long-term paid subscription. I don't use a smartphone and know little of these "apps" of which Alansplodge speaks, but on what terms was the Android app made available? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.27.39 (talk) 17:10, 2 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The main problem with the Android theory is that the release occurred on July 28th, not July 19th/20th, so the trendline doesn't match up. (As a matter of fact, on July 28th the number of daily page views was steadily declining until July 30th, making this even less plausible.)

On closer inspection, the graph appears to document two general peaks: one occurring between July 20th and August 4th, and the other occurring between August 5th and August 16th. The second of these almost perfectly coincides with the 2016 Summer Olympics (August 5th – August 21st), but the daily page views also dropped five days before the Games ended, so while I suspect the Olympic Games caused the second bump in traffic, I also suspect they're not what also killed said bump. (It's worth pointing out that between August 17th and August 21st (according to 2016 Summer Olympics#Calendar, at least), the competitions for Diving, Artistic Swimming, Water Polo, Basketball, Sprint Canoeing, BMX Cycling, Field Hockey, Football, Golf, Rhythmic Gymnastics, Handball, the Modern Pentathlon, and Indoor Volleyball were all still ongoing—so it isn't as if all of the events had ended when the page views dropped.)

The hypothetical change in pageview counting is also definitely plausible; to that end, I looked through the tool's Phabricator change log between a week before the traffic spike and a week afterwards (results here). On July 19th, they seemed to be discussing a bug allowing Cross-site scripting attacks, which is rather unhelpful for our purposes; the activity around August 16th is more interesting, however. An automated script/bot was reported to be "making requests for the same article with the same date range, etc." repeatedly on August 10th, and was reported to have halted by August 22nd. If the bot/script was truly "loading the page more than 10 times per second," and each pageload counted as a view, that bug could be hyper-inflating the page count around that time. (Though this theory is admittedly dampened by the fact that the bug reporter explicitly stated that "Anyway [sic] the tool is not broken" in his report.) If someone more experienced with coding than me could check the Phabricator issue to see if the script/bot's requests could even be counted as pageviews, that would be greatly appreciated, but that is my current theory at the moment. — TheHardestAspectOfCreatingAnAccountIsAlwaysTheUsername: posted at 19:05, 2 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

April 3

Con't from Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2020 March 25#Pocket radio

There is a am/fm switch there is no difference between the both, the radio only connects fine if I push the tuning knob in and hold it the entire time. --Thegooduser Life Begins With a Smile :) 🍁 01:41, 3 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Take the board out of the radio if you can. The tuning knob will be mounted on a rotating shaft or disc that's part of a component, either a variable capacitor or a potentiometer, most likely mounted on the pc board. Check the solder connections of that component on the board very carefully and touch them up if you have to. 2601:648:8202:96B0:E0CB:579B:1F5:84ED (talk) 03:12, 3 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the instruction manual for that radio by the way: [2]. I don't see a service manual there though. If the tuning control is basically a trimpot the wiper could be losing contact when it's not pressed down. OP, if it's the open style of pot or you can get it open, you might be able to fix it with a pocket knife (bend the wiper downwards) and a little contact cleaner. User:Guy Macon, do you have any ideas about this? Do they still use variable capacitors in cheap radios like that instead of doing everything on a chip? 2601:648:8202:96B0:E0CB:579B:1F5:84ED (talk) 09:34, 3 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Lions

Who was the fastest elephant in the world? Who was the fastest lemur in the world? 68.129.97.180 (talk) 13:49, 3 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]