Then I derped. My bad!
The way that I interpret it, OP's girlfriend was simply being hyperbolic. I don't think that she's genuinely asking OP to kill her hypothetical kidnappers; specially given that, as OP mentioned, they live in a safe place.
Instead I think that she simply wants to be reassured that OP cares about her and her security. And then started playing around with the "but what about our cat?" thing because come on, if you're thinking on outrageous scenarios, might as well think on them properly!
I get that you're trying to get more info to help OP out better, but I think that it's better to drop this "where are you from?" talk. Privacy-wise it's rather problematic, you know? [Sorry for the uncalled advice.]
You're probably better off trusting your guts, and the guts of people around you, than what anyone in the internet says about this matter. Including me.
That said: I don't think that she's either gaslighting or guilt tripping you. I think that she's simply feeling insecure.
For reference, it's roughly the same size as Kyūshū, 2/3 of Tasmania, or 1/2 of Ireland. That might not sound like a big deal until you remember that it's a fluvial island, unlike those three.
Fun fact: from December to May, most of the island gets flooded. (It's "wet season" there.)
[Reader, beware: take what I say with a grain of salt. I'm not trans, I just happen to have a few trans friends here and there.]
I think that people in general confuse the symbols too much with what they represent. Third person pronouns in English might symbolise your gender identity, but they aren't the identity itself; first and foremost, you're still you, regardless of those words. Just pick whatever you feel more comfortable with - be it "he/him", "any", or any other choice.
And remember that your choice of pronouns doesn't dictate who you are. Even if you see yourself as effeminate, and even if you have an unclear identity, and go for he/him, there's no contradiction. Same deal if you pick "any" and see yourself as a man.
And I feel like a lot of trans people have the same identity struggles as you do, or at least know someone in the same situation. Based on that I don't think that the ones in good faith would bat an eye towards something like "he/him/any".
You might say that your conlang is "lacking" in some aspects, but don't sell yourself short - it's genuinely interesting, and it has just the "right" amount of subtle influences to hint the general area without making it a relex of something else.
For example. The lowered short vowels remind me German. The complex case system reminds me Finno-Ugric languages. But that voice contrast in fricatives isn't typical in either, specially not with less common consonants like /ð ʒ/. And your written samples remind me neither.
I also like how you're handling the dual number here. The dual is typically in a weird spot in most languages, not being simply "plural for two" but its own thing; roughly "a pair of". Your conlang is extremely realistic in this aspect, as well as the amount of plural/dual syncretism.
I speak some bits of Esperanto. Simple sentences, really; "mi nomiĝas [enmetu nomon]" tier. I could've progressed further on it if I wasn't prone to the "oooh shiny" syndrome, and Sanskrit didn't take so much of my time back then.
I also can read and write Tengwar, but I don't know any conlang using it, not even Sindarin. (I use it mostly with Italian and Portuguese)
Beyond that I'm trying to learn the basics of my own conlangs Tarune and Meznagar as I'm making them. Specially the later as it has a bit more of a normal phonology, the former has stuff like pre/post-nasalised stops and uvulars that give me a hard time.
Those are used with urine, not blood. Urine is yellow-ish, but since it's just a drop, it doesn't stain the strip; instead, the blue tip changes colour as it reacts with the glucose in the urine. Then you compare that coloured tip with a chart, and you get an idea of the concentration of glucose in your body. Picture related:
I remember seeing those bottles in my bathroom all the time as a kid (my sister is diabetic).
These almost look more like ph or ketone test strips…
It is roughly the same idea as the one behind the litmus test for pH, indeed. The difference is which substance you're putting there (Benedict's reagent vs. pH indicators) and which substance you're testing for (glucose vs. H₃O⁺ / OH⁻).
If you're talking about strips that look like this:
I believe that most brands use Benedict's reagent: copper sulphate, sodium citrate, sodium carbonate. It interacts with reducing sugars (like glucose) and the colour goes from blue to light green to green to brown-green to brown-red, depending on concentration.
If you're talking about strips that look as in the left:
It's Benedict's reagent: copper sulphate, sodium citrate, sodium carbonate.
The only time that I remember dreaming with my phone, I was trying to turn it off, while its real life counterpart rung furiously.
I've dreamt some times with my desktop though. Such as:
- my cat pulling out the mouse from my computer, sitting in its place on the mousepad, and then meowing loudly (she does this a lot when she's play-hunting)
- throwing potatoes on the screen, so I could get some French fries in return
- keyboard gardening: the keys were subbed with small pots full of dirt, some with small versions of plants. A lot of them were pepper plants and I was trying to cross-breed them.
If this is your first time installing Linux, keep it simple.
what partitions do linux distros need to function ?
One is enough for Linux alone. Two if you want to dual boot (one for Windows, another for Linux). Everything else is optional.
what linux distros support secure boot with nvidia drivers ?
I don't have a full list, but I'm reasonably certain that Linux Mint supports secure boot UEFI, and I'm sure that it supports NVidia drivers.
Note that you can disable secure boot to run other distros if necessary/desired.
is it bad idea to install linux on a single drive in its own partition ?
As in, single boot? It's only a bad idea if you need Windows for some reason. But then you could run Windows from a virtual machine, as the other poster said.
I have heard some linux distros like linux mint and ubuntu have a habit of touching other efi partitions when being told not to, are there any other distros that do that ?
I'm really unsure if this actually happens; I've dual booted Windows with Ubuntu for years, and to my knowledge Ubuntu never touched the Windows partition without my permission.
Plus if this happened I bet that a lot of people would be raging.
Is there anything else I should be aware about ?
Don't look for exact copies of the software that you typically use with Windows. Instead, look for software that fills the same purpose.
When possible, let your distribution install software for you, through its own package manager. Downloading and running random executables from the internet is a last resort.
The Arch wiki is a godsend even if you don't use Arch. (I don't use Arch BTW.)
When asking people for help, make sure to include which distro you're running, and which version.
I'll use the opportunity to list a few resources that people might find useful:
- The Language Construction Kit. It's written mostly for newbies starting out on this vice. Yes, vice, because conlanging is addictive (ask Tolkien).
- The Index Diachronica. It lists sound changes by family and sound, so if you're evolving your conlang from another, it gives you a good idea on what would feel natural.
- The International Phonetic Alphabet chart. You don't need to know the IPA to make your own conlang, but it's a great way to refer to the sounds that you might include in your conlang.
- This glossary of linguistic terms is a lot like the above, except for linguistic vocab in general.
And while I don't plan to be active on moderation duties in this community, for everyone here: don't be afraid to ask for my help on questions regarding phonology and evolution! I have a decent grasp on both matters, I did use them for my own conlangs, and I enjoy talking about this stuff.
Happy conlanging!
I'm almost 40. More than a decade ago I used to live on my own, then decided to move back with my mum. It was better for both - splitting expenses, keeping her company, splitting tasks, so goes on.
This screams FAITH (Filthy Assumptions Instead of THinking) from a distance, on multiple levels:
- Assuming that the current machine learning development will lead to artificial general intelligence. Will it?
- Assuming that said AGI would appear in time to reduce power consumption. Will it?
- Assuming that lowering the future power consumption will be enough to address issues caused by the current power consumption. Will it?
- Assuming that addressing issues from a distant future means that the whole process won't cause harm for people in a nearer future. Will it?
Furthermore, Gates in the quote is being disingenuous:
"Let's not go overboard on this," he said. "Datacenters are, in the most extreme case, a 6 percent addition [to the energy load] but probably only 2 to 2.5 percent. The question is, will AI accelerate a more than 6 percent reduction? And the answer is: certainly," Gates said.
The answer addresses something far, far more specific than the main issue.
If I may, here's my alternative solution for the problem, in the same style as Gates':
Kill everyone between the North Pole and the Equator.
What do you mean, it would kill 85% people in the world? Well, you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs, right? Nobody that I know personally lives there, so Not My Problem®. (Just keep Japan, I need my anime to watch.)
...I'm being clearly sarcastic to deliver a point here - it's trivially easy to underestimate issues affecting humankind, and problems associated with their solutions, if you are not directly affected by either. Gates is some billionaire bubbled around rich people; this sort of problem will affect the poor first, as the rich can simply throw enough money into their problems to make them go away.
Jet lag is the hell of a drug. And not a fun one.
More like the straw that broke the camel's back. And a sign that Microsoft's behaviour is still the same as it was in IE times.
I know that this expression desensitises people to something serious, but it describes Microsoft - the "it"/corporation - perfectly: rapist mentality. It shows how eager Microsoft is to disregard consent, users saying "no, I don't want it", and to force itself over the users as long as it gets some benefit out of it.
Including new obnoxious advertisement slots into an already released product - one that you paid for - is only a result of that mentality.
I thought about this a while ago. My conclusion was that the simplest way to handle this would be to copy multireddits, and expand upon them.
Here's how I see it working.
Users can create multireddits multicommunities multis as they want. What goes within a multi is up to the user; for example if you want to create a "myfavs" multi with !potatoism, !illegallysmolcats and !anime_art, you do you.
The multi owner can:
- edit it - change name, add/remove comms to/from the multi
- make the multi public or private
- use the multi as their feed, instead of Subscribed/Local/All
- use the multi to bulk subscribe, unsub, or block comms
By default a multi would be private, and available only for the user creating it. However, you can make it public if you want; this would create a link for that multi, available for everyone checking your profile. (Or you could share it directly.)
You can use someone else's public multi as your feed or to bulk subscribe/unsub/block comms. You can also "fork" = copy it; that would create an identical multi associated with your profile, that then you can edit.
Archaeologists discovered the stone tablet at a Tartessian site in southwestern Spain.
I'm sharing this here mostly due to the alphabet. The relevant region (Tartessos) would be roughly what's today the western parts of Andalucia, plus the Algarve.
Here are the news in Spanish, for anyone interested.
The number of letters is specially relevant for me - 32 letters. The writing system is a redundant alphabet, where you use different graphemes for the stops, depending on the next vowel; and it was likely made for a language with five vowels, so you had five letters for /p/, five for /t/, five for /k/. Counting the "bare" vowels this yields 20 letters; /m n s r l/ fit well with that phonology, but what about the other seven?
Context: some days ago, I commented in a topic about Argiope bruennichi that I had a similar spider living on my kumquat tree, later identified to be Argiope argentata. And @quinacridone@lemmy.ml asked for an update, if she laid eggs.
So, here they are. Sadly I couldn't even notice that she laid eggs, let alone photograph the egg sac. But hey, I got little cute spiders~
Here's their mum, Kumoko:
This recipe is great to repurpose lunch leftovers for dinner. It's also relatively mess-free. Loosely based on egg-fried rice.
Amounts listed for two servings, but they're eyeballed so use your judgment.
Ingredients:
- Cooked leftover rice. 200~300g (cooked) is probably good enough. It's fine to use pilaf, just make sure that the rice is cold, a bit dry, and that the grains are easy to separate.
- Two eggs. Cracked into a small bowl and whisked with salt, pepper, and MSG. Or the seasoning of your choice.
- Veg oil. For browning.
- Water. Or broth if you want, it's just a bit.
- [OPTIONAL] Meats. Leftover beef, pork, or chicken work well. Supplement it with ham, firmer sausages, and/or bacon; 1/2 cup should be enough for two. Dice them small.
- [OPTIONAL] Vegs. I'd add at least half raw onion; but feel free to use leftover cooked cabbages, peas, bell peppers, etc. Or even raw ones. Also diced small.
- [OPTIONAL] Chives. Mostly as a finishing touch. Sliced thinly.
Preparation:
- Add a spoonful of veg oil to a wok or similar. Let it heat a bit.
- If using raw meats: add them to the wok, and let them brown on high fire, stirring constantly. Else, skip this step.
- If using raw vegs: add them to the wok, and let them it cook on mid-low fire. Else, skip this step.
- Add the already cooked ingredients (rice, meats, vegs). Medium fire, stirring gentle but constantly; you want to heat them up, not to cook them further. Adjust seasoning if desired.
- Spread the whisked egg over your heated rice mix, while stirring and folding the rice frenetically. You want the egg to coat the rice grains, but they should be still separated when done. If some whisked egg is sticking to the wok and/or the rice is too dry, drip some water/broth and scrap the bottom of the wok; just don't overdo it (you don't want soggy rice). Anyway, when the egg is cooked this step is done, it'll give the rice grains a nice yellow colour and lots of flavour.
- If using chives, add them after your turned off the fire (they get sad if cooked). Enjoy your meal.
I was going to share a picture of the final result, but I may or may not have eaten it before thinking about sharing the recipe. Sorry. :#
I got a weird problem involving both of my cats (Siegfrieda, to the left; Kika, to the right).
Kika is rather particular about having her own litterbox(es), and refuses to use a litterbox shared by another cat. Frieda on the other hand is adept to the "if I fits, I sits, I shits" philosophy, and is totally OK sharing litterboxes.
That creates a problem: no matter if properly and regularly cleaned, the only one using litterboxes here is Frieda. We had, like, five of them at once; and Kika would still rather do her business on the patio.
How do I either teach Kika "it's fine to share a litterbox", or teach Siegfrieda "that's Kika's litterbox, leave it alone"?
Johanna Nichols, a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley, has used her pioneering work in the field of language history to learn more about language development in North America. She has found that it can be traced back to two language groups that originated in Siberia. Her paper is pub...
Context: my mum got some keikis of this orchid from a neighbour. She managed to grow them into a full plant, it even flowered (as per pic), but she has no idea on which species of orchid it is.
I am not sure if it's a native species here (I'm in the subtropical parts of South America), but it seems to be growing just fine indoors in a Cfb climate.
Disregard the vase saying "phal azul" (blue phal), it used to belong to another orchid; it doesn't seem to be a Phalaenopsis.
If necessary I can provide further pics, but note that it has lost the flowers already.
Any idea?
_____________
EDIT: thanks to @jerry@fedia.io's comment, we could find it - it's a Miltoniopsis. Likely from Colombia or Ecuador, not from my area.
I feel slightly offended. Because it's true.
(Alt text: "Do you feel like the answer depends on whether you're currently in the hole, versus when you refer to the events later after you get out? Assuming you get out.")
Link to the community: !isekai@ani.social
Feel free to join and talk about your favourite series. The rules are rather simple, and they're there to ensure smooth discussion.
I'm sharing this mostly as a historical curiosity; Schleicher was genial, but the book is a century and half old, science marches on, so it isn't exactly good source material. Still an enjoyable read if you like Historical Linguistics, as it was one of the first successful attempts to reconstruct a language based on indirect output from its child languages.
A class of speech sounds that is now present in nearly half of the world’s languages -- labiodentals, produced by positioning the lower lip against the upper teeth, such as in ‘f’ or ‘v’ -- are a relatively recent development, one brought about by post-Neolithic diet-induced changes in the human bit...
Link for the Science research article. The observation that societies without access to softer food kind of avoided labiodentals is old, from 1985, but the research is recent-ish (2019).
While AI now allows us to erase accents, is this really a good idea? Besides, who doesn’t have an accent?
Même texte en français ici. I'll copypaste the English version here in case of paywall.
Accents are one of the cherished hallmarks of cultural diversity.
Why AI software ‘softening’ accents is problematic
Published 2024/Jan/11\ by Grégory Miras, Professeur des Universités en didactique des langues, Université de Lorraine
“Why isn’t it a beautiful thing?” a puzzled Sharath Keshava Narayana asked of his AI device masking accents.
Produced by his company, Sanas, the recent technology seeks to “soften” the accents of call centre workers in real-time to allegedly shield them from bias and discrimination. It has sparked widespread interest both in the English-speaking and French-speaking world since it was launched in September 2022.
Far from everyone is convinced of the software’s anti-racist credentials, however. Rather, critics contend it plunges us into a contemporary dystopia where technology is used to erase individuals’ differences, identity markers and cultures.
To understand them, we could do worse than reviewing what constitutes an accent in the first place. How can they be suppressed? And in what ways does ironing them out bends far more than sound waves?
How artificial intelligence can silence an accent
“Accents” can be defined, among others, as a set of oral clues (vowels, consonants, intonation, etc.) that contribute to the more or less conscious elaboration of hypotheses on the identity of individuals (e.g. geographically or socially). An accent can be described as regional or foreign according to different narratives.
With start-up technologies typically akin to black boxes, we have little information about the tools deployed by Sanas to standardise our way of speaking. However, we know most methods aim to at least partially transform the structure of the sound wave in order to bring certain acoustic cues closer to a perceptive criteria. The technology tweaks vowels, consonants along with parameters such as rhythm, intonation or accentuation. At the same time, the technology will be looking to safeguard as many vocal cues as possible to allow for the recognition of the original speaker’s voice, such as with voice cloning, a process that can result in deepfake vocal scams. These technologies make it possible to dissociate what is speech-related from what is voice-related.
The automatic and real-time processing of speech poses technological difficulties, the main one being the quality of the sound signal to be processed. Software developers have succeeded in overcoming them by basing themselves on deep learning, neural networks, as well as large data bases of speech audio files, which make it possible to better manage the uncertainties in the signal.
In the case of foreign languages, Sylvain Detey, Lionel Fontan and Thomas Pellegrini identify some of the issues inherent in the development of these technologies, including that of which standard to use for comparison, or the role that speech audio files can have in determining them.
The myth of the neutral accent
But accent identification is not limited to acoustics alone. Donald L. Rubin has shown that listeners can recreate the impression of a perceived accent simply by associating faces of supposedly different origins with speech. In fact, absent these other cues, speakers are not so good at recognising accents that they do not regularly hear or that they might stereotypically picture, such as German, which many associate with “aggressive” consonants.
The wishful desire to iron out accents to combat prejudice raises the question of what a “neutral” accent is. Rosina Lippi-Green points out that the ideology of the standard language - the idea that there is a way of expressing oneself that is not marked - holds sway over much of society but has no basis in fact. Vijay Ramjattan further links recent collossal efforts to develop accent “reduction” and “suppression” tools with the neoliberal model, under which people are assigned skills and attributes on which they depend. Recent capitalism perceives language as a skill, and therefore the “wrong accent” is said to lead to reduced opportunities.
Intelligibility thus becomes a pretext for blaming individuals for their lack of skills in tasks requiring oral communication according to Janin Roessel. Rather than forcing individuals with “an accent to reduce it”, researchers such as Munro and Derwing have shown that it is possible to train individuals to adapt their aural abilities to phonological variation. What’s more, it’s not up to individuals to change, but for public policies to better protect those who are discriminated against on the basis of their accent - accentism.
Delete or keep, the chicken or the egg?
In the field of sociology, Wayne Brekhus calls on us to pay specific attention to the invisible, weighing up what isn’t marked as much as what is, the “lack of accent” as well as its reverse. This leads us to reconsider the power relations that exist between individuals and the way in which we homogenise the marked: the one who has (according to others) an accent.
So we are led to Catherine Pascal’s question of how emerging technologies can hone our roles as “citizens” rather than “machines”. To “remove an accent” is to value a dominant type of “accent” while neglecting the fact that other co-factors will participate in the perception of this accent as well as the emergence of discrimination. “Removing the accent” does not remove discrimination. On the contrary, the accent gives voice to identity, thus participating in the phenomena of humanisation, group membership and even empathy: the accent is a channel for otherness.
If technologies such AI and deep learning offers us untapped possibilities, they can also lead to a dystopia where dehumanisation overshadows priorities such as the common good or diversity, as spelt out in the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity. Rather than hiding them, it seems necessary to make recruiters aware of how accents can contribute to customer satisfaction and for politicians to take up this issue.
Research projects such as PROSOPHON at the University of Lorraine (France), which bring together researchers in applied linguistics and work psychology, are aimed at making recruiters more aware of their responsibilities in terms of biais awareness, but also at empowering job applicants “with an accent”. By asking the question “Why isn’t this a beautiful thing?”, companies like SANAS remind us why technologies based on internalized oppressions don’t make people happy at work.
Cockney and received pronunciation (Queen's English) were once spoken by people of all ages, but they are no longer commonly spoken among young people in the south-east of England.
Small bit of info: Charles III still speaks RP, but the prince William (heir to the throne) already shifted to SSBE. Geoffrey Lindsey has a rather good video on that.
Links to the community:
- /c/linguistics@mander.xyz
- !linguistics@mander.xyz
The community is open for everyone regardless of previous knowledge on the field. Feel free to ask or share stuff about languages and dialects, how they work (grammar, phonology, etc.), where they're from, how people use them, or more general stuff about human linguistic communication.
And the rules are fairly simple. They boil down to 1) stay on-topic, 2) source it when reasonable, 3) avoid pseudoscience.
Have fun!
This is a rather long study, from the Oxford Studies in Ancient Documents. Its general content should be clear by the title, and it focuses on three "chunks" of the former Roman empire: Maghreb and Iberia, Gallia and Germania, and the British Isles.
I've recreated a Linguistics community here in mander.xyz. As the sidebar says, it's for everyone, regardless of previous knowledge over the field, so even if you're a layperson feel free to drop by.
Here's the link: !linguistics@mander.xyz
In case that you're in a Kbin/Mbin instance and the above doesn't work, try /m/linguistics@mander.xyz instead.
Reading stories regularly strengthens social-cognitive skills—such as empathy—in both children and adults. And this, in turn, ensures that we can empathize with characters more effectively and more quickly when we are reading. This is the subject of linguist Lynn Eekhof's Ph.D., which she will recei...
Further info: the linguist in question is Lynn S. Eekhof, and she has quite a few publications about the topic, worth IMO reading.
Lvxferre @mander.xyz The catarrhine who invented a perpetual motion machine, by dreaming at night and devouring its own dreams through the day.