Is there a linguistic reason why we sometimes use a singular pronoun and verb even when it refers to a plural subject? Here is the  from Why is a Red Herring Red? by Mitchell Symons (2020):  Consequently, when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first.
Can "it" be used with plural subject? Several years ago I heard of something called dummy subjects in high school. It was then stated that, for example, it is a dummy subject when it starts many instances of sentences, e.g.        It is rainy today.   It is hard to imagine how hard is to live alone.   It is not my university degree that matters here.     My question is if we can use it with plural subjects? For example in       If some think that in Mahmoud Dowlatabadi’s works it is only social themes that matter and the writer is ignoring fictional arrays and artistic techniques, at least, endings of his stories show wrongness of this idea.     My question deals with the italicized part. If this usage is OK, can we also write they are social themes that matter? I mean can they also play the role of a dummy subject?
What are Click packages? I noticed that Ubuntu SDK recently had some updates and it installed a program named "Click". I would like to know what they are and how to use them.  Also, would they make Debian packaging easier? Negative probabilities in quantum physics Another layman blackhole question, pulling one end of a string out from behind the event horizon No long explanation is needed,  What would happen if I were to allow one end of a rope to fall past the event horizon of a black hole while I held the other end?  Would I be able to pull it out? Would the rope feel extremely (infinitely?) heavy? When to use virtual destructors? UK Standard Visitor visa application to sit for PLAB 1 without savings or job I am a medical doctor in Pakistan. I have been on a career break to allow myself to study full time for the IELTS exam (from which I recently got the required band score) and PLAB 1. I have now registered and paid for the PLAB 1 exam in UK for June 2016, as the next sitting in Pakistan is in November 2016 and I feel like I am ready to do the exam sooner.  Due to having no current employment, my savings are limited (around 25,000 Pakistani Rupees) but I live with my parents and do not have any financial commitments at home.  My savings have depleted in the past ten months whilst I have taken a career break and the money has been used for my own personal expenses. My trip to the UK is being funded by my grandfather who is a British citizen. He is a retired doctor with a good NHS pension. He has provided me with:   6 months bank statements which clearly show his pension deposits   Letter from NHS Pensions stating his pension   Sponsorship letter stating that he will pay for my PLAB exam fee, travel, accommodation and subsistinence costs whilst in the UK   Copy of British passport  Document confirming that he owns the house he lives in mortgage-free Confirmation email from GMC stating he has paid the PLAB exam fee.   Without large personal savings and no current job (but I have job offers now) would my application be rejected or is the strong sponsorship going to be good enough?  Are there any other documents I should consider submitting that may help me get a visa? Comparing SVM and logistic regression Can someone please give me some intuition as to when to choose either SVM or LR? I want to understand the intuition behind what is the difference between the optimization criteria of learning the hyperplane of the two, where the respective aims are as follows:     SVM: Try to maximize the margin between the closest support vectors LR: Maximize the posterior class probability    Let's consider the linear feature space for both SVM and LR.  Some differences I know of already:   SVM is deterministic (but we can use Platts model for probability score) while LR is probabilistic. For the kernel space, SVM is faster (stores just support vectors) How to handle relative urls correctly with a nginx reverse proxy Sure I'm not the first one that tried to serve a domain example.com from a example.net/bbb, but I haven't found a solution yet.  My NGINX configuration follows the  and looks something like this:  server {     listen 80;     server_name example.net;     root /path/to/aaa;      location /bbb/ {         proxy_pass http://example.com/;         proxy_set_header Host $host;         proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;     }      location / {         try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;     }     location ~ \.(svg|ttf|js|css|svgz|eot|otf|woff|jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico)$ {         access_log off;         log_not_found off;         expires max;     } }   I can manage to render the root of example.com in example.net/bbb but:  ISSUE 1  example.net/bbb/some/path doesn't work as expected and the index.html of example.net is rendered.  ISSUE 2  Any asset in example.com/assets gives 404 because the browser look for example.net/assets. Be great if I could solve this without placing absolute paths everywhere. Print xml with php Getting CalloutException when testing Batchable class with Callouts and HttpCalloutMock How do I install PowerShell? Not long ago I read something on Microsoft's website about PowerShell being available for Ubuntu.   How would I go about the install of PowerShell?  I'd appreciate guidance for both Xenial &amp; Trusty.   Any installation method is fine, whether compiling source or relying on a package-manager.  Source-compiling methods should contain beginner-level detail. How should I parse the sentence "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo." How to read exponential expressions, e.g., "2^16"? How do you say the mathematical function in English:     x^y (or xy)   For example, how do you say      2^16  (or 216)   I know ^ means 'power' or 'exponentiate', but that is the name of the operation, not how you pronounce its use.  If y = 2, it is 'x squared', y=3 then 'x cubed'. What if y is some other arbitrary number? Redirect stdin and stdout to ports I'd like to take a program P that reads from stdin &amp; writes to stdout, but connect it to nc or whatever such that it reads from a certain port and outputs to another port.  # The reading is easy, here P reads from port 50505 nc -l 50505 | P   How do I get it to write back to say port 60606? Loop-cut won't go all the way around Using relative paths for Windows shortcuts Prove that to each $\epsilon >0$, there exists a $\delta >0$ so that the Lebesgue integral... Suppose $f$ is in $L^1$ space of $\mu$, where $\mu$ is the Lebesgue measure. Prove that to each $\epsilon &gt;0$, there exists a $\delta &gt;0$ so that the Lebesgue integral of the absolute value of $f$ is less than $\epsilon$ (over the set $E$) whenever the measure of $E$ is less than $\delta$.  I know that the integral of $f$ is finite. So for arbitrary $f$ we can find the integral of $f$ to be less than some $\epsilon$, but how would I connect that with the measure of $E$ less than $\delta$. Any help would be welcome. Unable to install LanguageTool 2.5 extension for LibreOffice 4.2 on Ubuntu 14.04 I am not able to install LanguageTool extension for LibreOffice. Getting exception when I try to install it.   p.s. Somebody says that the solution is installing openoffice.org-java-common package but Ubuntu 14.04 does not have this package in its repository.  System details:  OS: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS  LibreOffice: 4.2 (4.2.3.3)  LanguageTool: 2.5  Java: Oracle JDK 1.8.0_05     Exception message: Determining if trees within forest gaps are clustered using R? The attached dataset shows approximately 6000 saplings in approximately 50 variable sized forest gaps.  I am interested in learning how these saplings are growing within their respective gaps (i.e. clustered, random, dispersed).  As you know, a traditional approach would be to run Global Moran's I.  However, aggregations of trees within aggregations of gaps seems to be an inappropriate use of Moran's I.  I ran some test statistics with Moran's I using a threshold distance of 50 meters, which produced nonsensical results (i.e. p-value = 0.0000000...).  The interaction among the gap aggregations are likely producing these results.  I have considered creating a script to loop through individual canopy gaps and determine the clustering within each gap, although displaying these results to the public would be problematic.    What is the best approach to quantify clustering within clusters? What are the survival limitations of alcohol? This question was inspired by watching one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies; particularly where Jack Sparrow allegedly survives on a desert island by finding an unlimited supply of rum. I've heard alcoholic drinks dehydrate you more than hydrate you, so this seems like an unsustainable strategy.  My question is threefold.    How long can a human survive by drinking hard liquor (40% alcohol by volume) for their sole water intake (ignoring food)? If it's unsustainable, what will finally take you down? If the hard-liquor approach isn't viable, what % alcohol can keep you hydrated (beer, wine, etc.)?   Related: 1.  2. How can I get octal file permissions from command line?