lvxferre

joined 2 years ago
MODERATOR OF
[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (3 children)

My guess is that the taste of non-avian dinos would vary quite a bit:

  • large herbivores would probably taste similar to beef, venison and cheval, except really gamey. Because it's what people who ate ostrich say about its meat, it isn't chicken-like at all.
  • smaller ones could perhaps taste like birds? Specially if omnivorous.
[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 12 points 1 day ago

Then as you want to wash your hand...

A tabby resting comfortably inside a bathroom sink, looking at the viewer.

(She used to love sleeping there. )

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 27 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Not surprised with the lobbying group.

Ross did an amazing job addressing the babble in the statement. Specially because he's being extra careful on saying things to the best of his knowledge - note how he doesn't say "it's false", or "it's a lie", but rather "a German lawyer thinks this is false" and "this sounds like a lie"; gotta respect that.

Some additional comments:

The first paragraph of the lobbying group's statement might sound like an introduction, but it's already a straw man - it's clearly misleading the reader on what Stop Killing Games is about.

as the protections we put in place

Excuse me?

  1. Sod off with this "THINK ON PROTEKSHUN!" idiotic argument;
  2. let us not forget the main concern when it comes to data protection are companies harvesting data so they can sell it to their "affiliate partners" (i.e. data vultures eager who'll use it for targetted spam).

Note #1 is a cancer way more widespread than just the gaming industry. Every fucking bloody time some megacorpo wants to fight against some sane customer protection law, they babble shite like this. And it always sounds like "a user/customer is not a rational human being, it's irrational trash, and if you let it do what it wants it'll cause itself harm, so We need to protect those filthy things. And how convenient, the way to protect this filth against itself magically aligns with our financial interests!"

these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.

This is not even a fallacy. Not even bullshit. It's simply to be a lying bastard, and to call the readers bloody muppets by proxy.

1M+ sign European Citizen's Initiative "Stop Destroying Videogames": Help us protect gamers' consumer rights!

I think it would be sensible if the word "gamer" was replaced with "citizen" here. Because it's what politicians care about.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

He's also the guy who tried to institute three new letters to the alphabet:

  • ⟨Ↄ⟩ or ⟨ↃC⟩ for /ps/ [ps]. Modelled after ⟨X⟩ /ks/ [ks].
  • ⟨Ⱶ⟩ for [ɨ]~[ɯ]~[ʉ]. Not a phoneme for sure; I typically analyse it as an allophone of /u/.
  • ⟨Ⅎ⟩ for /w/ [w]~[β]. Interestingly he didn't make a new letter for /j/, but I guess it took longer to fricativise than /w/ did.

They're useless but show some rather interesting insights. For example, the letters were modified versions of ⟨C H F⟩ - so you don't need to create new tools to press those letters (e.g. in wax, or to preview in charcoal something you'll carve in stone), you can simply adapt old tools to do it. He also showed awareness of allophones in his native language, most people don't do it at all.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 28 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I was almost mentioning that.

By Darwin, Huxley and Haldane: why are our playgrounds the same organs as the garbage ducts? Why???

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The "bittersweet shipping": you know it's canon, and you know it'll never happen.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I live in in the southern region of brazil. The problem of homelessness here is by no means solved but at least some State and City governments are genuinely trying, through government companies (Cohab, roughly "habitation company").

Basically: if you have no house, and your monthly income is low enough, here you can subscribe to Cohab so it eventually "sells" you a house. You do pay for it but it's a rather low amount*. No sane mid class would ever consider those houses - but if you're homeless, it's still leagues above living in an irregular shitshack near the river, made of cardboard, metal sheets and random planks.

Additionally, water and electricity are really cheap if you're poor enough, and your household consumption is below a certain threshold.

The federation also has a similar project (Minha Casa, Minha Vida my house, my life), but... frankly I can't trust the federation to not divert tax money into someone's pockets.

* I think R$150~300/month ≃ €25~50/month is typical. For reference, minimum wage in my State is R$1.984,16 ≃ €300 per month.


Now, here's the catch: the local governments are doing this shit with a tiny fraction of the income the city, state and federal governments in USA have. Why the hell are they not doing something similar? Because of all that ideological meritocracy babble?

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 18 points 2 days ago

Not in the picture: a really, really mad dragon.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 4 points 2 days ago

They made Atou absolutely adorable! Seeing her embarrassed at the start, then pouting after the charity...

Also, great job highlighting the contrast between how Atou sees Takuto vs. how the dark elves see him. Not just in look (he looks like a shadow, that was already in the manga and novel), but also in "mood", he's supposed to be an Eldritch abomination from their PoV and the anime did a great job at it.

The opening was also cool IMO.

...perhaps I'm a bit too excited because it's one of those series I anticipated quite a bit, but so far it's a decent start IMO.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 1 points 2 days ago
  • some episodes of Ah! My Goddess, Kimetsu no Yaiba, Overlord, and Darling in the FranXX.
  • Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2
  • The Lion King
  • Matrix

It might look completely random, and... well, it is! I'm rebuilding my "videos" directory, that I share in my LAN. By doing so I always hit something interesting, drop whatever I'm doing, and watch it.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 1 points 3 days ago

[Warning: I'm mostly rambling.]

As usual you need to be careful with metaphors: they break once pulled hard enough.

The metaphor implies the security layers are independent, and always addictive. Often they aren't - they interact with each other, and often the presence of one layer makes the other worse. It's like double bagging condoms - they rub against each other, so they make you less protected than if you wore a single condom.

The "holes" are often dynamic, and they might change place over time. Sometimes the vulnerability crossed a hole of the first slice, hit the second slice and stayed there, until the second slice's hole aligns with it. Then the vulnerability crosses into the third slice, so goes on. If you're dealing with human beings, that's basically any system.

"NEEDS MORE LAYERS!" is not always the solution. Sometimes you're better off - in cost and security - if you replaced a few layers with a better one. Try mozzarella instead of Emmenthaler.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 9 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

This is yet another case where people don't notice the root of the problem, because one of the branches is so fucking large it takes the whole scene.

Spot the common element between the text and the following:

  • When Internet Explorer still existed, Microsoft gave you no way to remove it.
  • Later on (Edge times), Microsoft went out of its way to ignore your browser preferences and shove Edge down your throat.
  • Google: Enable Play Protect? Enable Play Protect? Enable Play Protect? Enable Play Protect?
  • "Because we're not designing a desktop for people who like to choose their own terminal emulators." - Bastien Nocera, GNOME dev
  • Plenty pieces of software offer you a choice between "yes" and "maybe later", but rather curiously avoid the word "no"
  • "Subscribe to our newsletter!" (i.e. spam). The only negative answer is worded like "I'm braindead trash thus I don't want to subscribe".

It's always about actively disempowering users. Even if technology was expected to do the opposite.

Why this matters: because even if the image + text generators went away, or got heavily regulated, or whatever, the problem still persists. And it'll still pop up elsewhere.

Solve this disgusting "Stop treating those THINGS as if they were human beings! They're users, not humans! Those things exist to be herded!" mindset and you'll solve the problem.

 

Interesting video on the stone that allowed researchers to decipher Ancient Egyptian. Check comments for a few notes.

 

Additional links with press coverage: ArcheologyMag, Oxford.

For context:

The Huns were nomadic people from Central Eurasia; known for displacing a bunch of Iranian (e.g. Alans) and and Germanic (e.g. Goths, Suebians etc.) speakers, that ultimately invaded the Roman Empire. They reached the Volga around 370 CE, and one of their leaders (Attila) is specially famous. Often believed to be a Turkic people, but if the study is correct they're from a completely different language family instead.

The Xiōng-Nú are mentioned by Chinese sources as one of the "Five Barbarians" (i.e. non-Han people). They would've lived in Central Eurasia between 300 BCE and 100 CE or so, and eventually became Han tributaries.

The Paleo-Siberian language in question would be an older form of Arin, a Yeniseian language. Yup, that same family believed by some to have relatives in the Americas.

 
 

For further info, if anyone is interested, Stephen Bax claimed a decade ago to partially decode the manuscript; here's a video with his reasoning, as well as the paper he released. Sadly Bax passed away in 2017 (may he rest in peace), so the work was left incomplete.

 

The main idea behind this language is to become evolutionary food for other languages of my conworld. As such I'll probably never flesh it out completely, only the necessary to make its descendants feel a bit more natural.

Constructive criticism is welcome.

Context and basic info

The conworld I'm building has three classical languages, spoken 2~3 millenniums before the conworld present: Old Sirtki, Classical Tarune, and Mäkşna. And scholars in the conworld present are reconstructing their common ancestor, that they call "Proto-Sitama".

What I'm sharing here, however is none of their fancy reconstructions. It's the phonology of the language as it was spoken 7 millenniums before the conworld present. Its native name was /kʲær.mi.'zɑst/, or roughly "what we speak"; the language itself had no written version but it'll be romanised here as ⟨Cjermizást⟩.

Its native speakers were a semi-nomadic people, who lived mostly of livestock herding. They'd stay in a region with their herds, collect local fruits and vegetables, and then migrate for more suitable pasture as their animals required.

It was quite a departure from the lifestyle of their star travelling ancestors, who were born in a highly industrialised society in another planet.

Grammar tidbits

Grammar-wise, Cjermizást was heavily agglutinative, with an absolutive-ergative alignment and Suffixaufnahme. So typically you'd see few long polymorphemic words per sentence. Those morphemes don't always "stack" nicely together, so you often see phonemes being elided, mutated, or added to the word.

Consonants

Manner \ Set Hard Soft
Nasals /m n/ /mʲ ɲ/
Voiceless stop /p t k/ /pʲ tʲ kʲ/
Voiced stop /b d g/ /bʲ dʲ gʲ/
Voiceless fric. /ɸ s x/ /fʲ ʃ ç/
Voiced fric. /w z ɣ/ /vʲ ʒ j/
Liquids /l r/ /ʎ rʲ/

Cjermizást features a contrast between "soft" and "hard" consonants. "Soft" consonants are palatalised, palatal, or post-alveolar; "hard" consonants cannot have any of those features. Both sets are phonemic, and all those consonants can surface outside clusters.

Palatalised consonants spawn a really short [j], that can be distinguished from true /j/ by length.

Although /j/ and /w/ are phonetically approximants, the language's phonology handles them as fricatives, being paired with /ɣ/ and /vʲ/ respectively.

/r rʲ/ surface as trills or taps, in free variation. The trills are more typical in simple onsets, while the taps in complex onsets and coda.

The contrast between /m n/ is neutralised when preceding another consonant in the same word, since both can surface as [m n ŋ]; ditto for /mʲ nʲ/ surfacing as [mʲ ɱʲ ɲ].

Coda /g/ can also surface as [ŋ], but only in word final position; as such, it doesn't merge with the above.

Liquids clustered with voiceless fricatives and/or stops have voiceless allophones.

Vowels

Proto-Sitama's vowel system is a simple square: /æ i ɒ u/. They have a wide range of allophones, with three situations being noteworthy:

  • /ɒ u/ are typically fronted to [Œ ʉ] after a soft consonant
  • /æ i/ are backed to [ɐ ɪ] after a hard velar
  • unstressed vowels are slightly centralised

Accent

Accent surfaces as stress, and it's dictated by the following rules:

  1. Some suffixes have an intrinsic stress. If the word has 1+ of those, then assign the primary stress to the last one. Else, assign it to the last syllable of the root.
  2. If the primary stress fell on the 5th/7th/9th/etc.-to-last syllable, move it to the 3rd-to-last
  3. If the primary stress fell on the 4th/6th/8th/etc.-to-last syllable, move it to the 2nd-to-last.
  4. Every two syllables, counting from the one with the primary stress, add a secondary stress.

Phonotactics

Max syllable is CCVCC, with the following restrictions:

  • complex onset: [stop] + [liquid]; e.g. /pl/ is a valid onset, */pw/ isn't
  • complex coda: [liquid or nasal] + [stop or fricative]; e.g. /nz/ is a valid coda, */dz/ isn't

If morphology would create a syllable violating such structure, an epenthetic /i/ dissolves the cluster.

Consonant clusters cannot mix hard and soft consonants. When such a mix would be required by the morphology, the last consonant dictates if the whole cluster should be soft or hard, and other consonants are mutated into their counterparts from the other set. For example, */lpʲ/ and */ʃp/ would be mutated to /ʎpʲ/ and /sp/.

Stops and fricatives clustered together cannot mix voice. Similar to the above, the last consonant of the cluster dictates the voicing of the rest; e.g. */dk/ and */pz/ would be converted into /tk/ and /bz/ respectively.

Gemination is not allowed, and two identical consonants next to each other are simplified into a singleton. Nasal consonants are also forbidden from appearing next to each other, although a cluster like /nt.m/ would be still valid.

Word-internal hiatuses are dissolved with an epenthetic /z/. Between words most speakers use a non-phonemic [ʔ], but some use [z] even in word boundaries.

Romanisation

As mentioned at the start, the people who spoke Cjermizást didn't write their own language. As such the romanisation here is solely a convenience.

  • /m n p t b d g s x w z l r/ are romanised as in IPA
  • /k ɸ ɣ/ are romanised ⟨c f y⟩
  • "soft" consonants are romanised as their "hard" counterparts, plus ⟨j⟩
  • ⟨j⟩ is omitted inside clusters; e.g. /pʲʎ/ is romanised as ⟨plj⟩, not as *⟨pjlj⟩
  • /æ i ɒ u/ are ⟨e i a u⟩
 
 

Use this thread to ask questions or share trivia, if you don't want to create a new thread for that.

[Note: the purpose of this thread is to promote activity, not to concentrate it. So if you'd still rather post a new thread, by all means - go for it!]

 

Quick summary: a tablet written in Hittite, from a likely vassal to their king, recounts how Attaršiya [Atreus?] of Ahhiyawa [the Achaeans] and his sons attacked Taruiša [Troy]. And at the end there's a fragment in another Anatolian language, Luwian, saying the following:

wa-ar-ku-uš-ša-an ma-a-aš-ša-ni SÌ[R
wrath.ACC god(dess).VOC? si[ng

So roughly "Sing, oh goddess, the wrath..."

This is pretty much how the Illiad starts in Greek:

μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
mênĭn áeide theā́ Pēlēïádeō Akhĭlêos
rage.ACC sing.IMP goddess.VOC Peleus.GEN Achilles.GEN
Sing, oh goddess, the rage of Achilles [son] of Peleus

 

Here's a direct link to the journal article.

Summary: phylogenomic study found that Hexapoda (insects, springtails, headcones) is a sister clade to Remipedia (venomous, cave-dwelling "crustaceans"). So it's basically the same that happened with birds and dinos, except with bugs.

18
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by lvxferre@mander.xyz to c/linguistics@mander.xyz
 

Feel free to use this thread to ask small questions or share random language / linguistics trivia, if you don't feel like creating a new thread just for that.

(Just to be clear: yes, if you want to create a new thread for your question/trivia, you can. I'm only trying to stimulate discussion in the comm.)

 

This infographic is still incomplete; I'm posting it here in the hope that I can get some feedback about it. It has three goals:

  1. To explain what federation is. No technobabble, just a simple analogy with houses and a neighbourhood.
  2. To explain why federation is good for users.
  3. [TODO] Specific info about the Fediverse, plus some really simple FAQ.

Criticism is welcome as long as constructive.

EDIT: OK, too much text. I'm clipping as much as I can.

 

This is not some sort of fancy new development, but it's such a classical experiment that it's always worth sharing IMO. Plus it's fun.

When you initially mix both solutions, nothing seems to happen. But once you wait a wee bit, the colour suddenly changes, from transparent to a dark blue.

There are a bunch of variations of this reaction, but they all boil down to the same things:

  • iodide - at the start of the reaction, it'll flip back and forth between iodide (I⁻) and triiodide ([I₃]⁻)
  • starch - it forms a complex with triiodide, with the dark blue colour you see in the video. But only with triiodide; iodide is left alone. So it's effectively an indicator for the triiodide here.
  • some reducing agent - NileRed used vitamin C (aka ascorbic acid; C₆H₈O₆), but it could be something like thiosulphate (S₂O₃²⁻) instead. The job of the reducing agent is to oxidise the triiodide back to iodide.
  • some oxidiser - here it's the hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) but it could be something like chlorate (ClO₃⁻) instead. Its main job is to oxidise the iodide to triiodide. You need more than enough oxidiser to be able to fully oxidise the reducing agent, plus a leftover.

"Wait a minute, why are there a reducing agent and an oxidiser, doing opposite things? They should cancel each other out!" - well, yes! However this does not happen instantaneously. And eventually the reducing agent will run dry (as long as there's enough oxidiser), the triiodide will pile up, react with the starch and you'll get the blue colour.

Here are simplified versions of the main reactions:

  1. 3I⁻ + H₂O₂ → [I₃]⁻ + 2OH⁻
  2. [I₃]⁻ + C₆H₈O₆ + 2H₂O → 3I⁻ + C₆H₆O₆ + 2H₃O⁺

(C₆H₆O₆ = dehydroascorbic acid) Eventually #2 stops happening because all vitamin C was consumed, so the triiodide piles up, reacts with the starch, and suddenly blue:

view more: next ›