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@gendercensus

Uk peeps!! Let’s get this going! 🏳️‍⚧️🇬🇧

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There are memes/jokes online about blue-eyed people needing brown contacts, or blue eyes in general being unnerving.

We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

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That's really interesting! It seems like a lot of people eat Moreton Bay bug, so maybe my 'technically edible' conclusion should be just 'edible' or maybe something a bit more complicated. It's a good reminder that the work I did only scratches the surface.

Tools like Word2Vec and corpus collocate data (words that are found next to the word in question much higher than chance, or that appear more than chance anywhere in texts that include the word in question) are very very useful for semantics research.

Something that I didn't explicitly spell out but probably should have is that the approach often used in semantics is investigating why the word in question is chosen over other words that might also fit. Why "a stupid bug entangled in a spider's web" and not "a stupid fly..." or "a stupid insect..."? Maybe because bug is associated with powerlessness or badness or etc. And so while 'what are the potential referents for the word' (technically, 'what is the word's denotation') is a valid, worthwhile and interesting question, to get the whole picture, you also have to ask 'under what conditions will a potential referent actually be referred to with this word'

I got annoyed by the polls that ask this question but fuck it up every time by either putting the options out of order or excluding reasonable options for delineating what is and is not a 'bug.' I work in a zoology lab, so this is, to my knowledge, only probably not going to piss off the entomologists too bad. The only thing I'm not confident about is where I placed the (wrong) paraphyletic 'all terrestrial arthropods' option, because it's silly to begin with and anyone who calls a spider a bug but not a shrimp should reconsider their anti-crustacean biases.

If you have some other strange perspective on what should or should not be a bug, put it in the tags. I will only judge you a little

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Thanks for the tag!

I commend the curiosity, but I do have some criticism.

The results would almost certainly be improved by a collage of each option, rather than the subject having to do their own research.

Obviously, the premise that linguistic taxonomy has anything to do with zoological taxonomy is false. That possibility is acknowledged in the 'aquatic-exclusive' option, but there is no option that includes centipedes but not crabs, for instance. Nor is there any option that includes, e.g. pea crabs and woodlice but not tasmanian giant crabs.

Also notably absent, in my opinion, are germs. I think it's a realistic enough possibility to be worth including, even if it's likely that for most people bug1 (that could refer to a beetle) and bug2 (that could refer to a flu-causing virus) are probably separate senses.

Speaking of separate senses, the inclusion of the "baby kittens and puppies, for example" option frankly baffles me. I have no evidence; only my intuition, but it's so obviously a different sense of the word that I can't help but feel its presence spoils the data. Not to mention that figuring out 'what feels to the subject like a bug' is the point of the poll.

It's hard to get good data from online corpora because the sense 'computer bug' is so prevalent these days (and pathogen/illness in the days before computer bugs), but here are some ways I've found the word we're interested in used in online-accessible corpora:

(Talking about a barnacle) "Our squishy bug will spend the rest of its life rooted inside its spacious exoskeleton, employing its feathery legs as a net to collect plankton and other nutrients from the water's current." Note: squishy. Squashing bugs comes up a lot with the 'computer bug' sense.

(talking about 9/11) "the Boeings used by commercial airliners would have gone *splat* against the towers like a bug against a windshield" (The bug-windshield metaphor is by far the use of our word that came up the most) Note: squishy, and an extreme power dynamic/powerlessness compared to the towers/windshield.

(talking about extraterrestrial contact) "I am thinking the bugs will have evolved to the point where they are running the place by then. There are FAR more bugs on the planet than people. I bet their god will look like a bug." Note: lack of specificity

(talking about atheists on the internet) "(That Tumblr blogger posts some good content, but she really has a bug up her ass about non-accommodationist atheism.)" I'm not sure this is the sense we're after, but I couldn't not inlcude it. Note: it's not a good thing

(talking about pesticides) "It doesn't matter much to the bug or the fungus if the pesticide is an extract from the neem tree and thereby legal for organic production, or if the insecticide is dreamed up in the labs of DuPont." Note: lack of specificity & it's not a good thing

(talking about an unfaithful husband, but blaming the other woman) "And then, like a stupid bug entangled in a spider's web, he was snared." Note: not a good thing, and a sense of powerlessness/extreme power dynamic.

(from a poem) "He visited Etna and Vesuvius, and Vesuvius he entered, let down the inner walls by lengths of rope, growing smaller and smaller like a bug on a thread tacked to the sky's vault with tiny pins of adamant." Note: power dynamic, size, unusual method of locomotion.

(from a poem mentioning many animals) "I saw a nibbling bug, like the god of a cool magnolia." Note: lack of specificity, eating, power dynamic converse to those seen previously, but it is poetry so we could argue that's deliberatet and still evidence in support of bugs being powerless.

(local news) "An old play area was uprooted to allow work to begin on the building of a Butterfly World hothouse bug collection and free flying area." Note: lack of specificity.

(book review) "We’ll meet a murderous husband and wife as well as a corrupt sheriff, and a bug eating holy man wannabe with a crippled sidekick." Note: edible, but maybe only in other cultures

(US Politics) "If Trump wins more than 240 electoral votes, I will eat a bug." Note: edible, but only technically

There were also a few metaphorical uses of a bug biting to refer to a new interest/hobby taking hold, but the closest I came to any references to literal bugs' mouths or biting is the 'nibbling bug' above.

So bug seems to be a word that refers to animals with some qualities such as: being squishy, undesirable, maybe being very powerless compared to humans, maybe with salient mouths technically edible It's also not a very specific word*

So it makes a lot of sense sense that crabs, especially large crabs, which aren't squishy, may have dangerous claws, and are very edible in our culture might not be bugs, or might be much worse examples of bugs than worms.

*that's maybe unfair. It may be more fair to say that English has a much more granular taxonomy in some areas than others. It is well known that individual bird species often get their own words in English, while bats are all just bat. So it may be for bug. It's also worth keeping an open mind to the idea that bug may not be a taxonomic superordinate at all, but a collective, i.e. not that they share some observable quality (like birds and feathers) but that they share some relationship to us (like clothes and being worn).

I got annoyed by the polls that ask this question but fuck it up every time by either putting the options out of order or excluding reasonable options for delineating what is and is not a 'bug.' I work in a zoology lab, so this is, to my knowledge, only probably not going to piss off the entomologists too bad. The only thing I'm not confident about is where I placed the (wrong) paraphyletic 'all terrestrial arthropods' option, because it's silly to begin with and anyone who calls a spider a bug but not a shrimp should reconsider their anti-crustacean biases.

If you have some other strange perspective on what should or should not be a bug, put it in the tags. I will only judge you a little

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New Quest! (time-limited: complete by 2029) Ensure that a new is royal born and named Prince Frederick Henry.

New Quest! (time-limited: complete in 2029) Kill Prince Frederick Henry.

New Quest! (time-limited: complete in 2306) Cause a great earthquate in San Francisco.

New Quest! (time-limited: complete between 2389 and 2418) Reboot Spongebob.

New Quest! (time-limited: complete between April 2401 and March 2402) Maximise human births for a year.

New Quest! (time-limited: complete in 2419) Prevent all human births for year.

New Quest! (time-limited: complete in 2419) Make a really good stirfry.

New Quest! (time-limited: complete on Wednesday the 13th of November 2424) Do your laundry.

New Quest! (time-limited: complete on Wednesday the 13th of November 2424) Spend at least 40 minutes writing an addition to this post.

variations on "feel old yet" meme:

lying (overshooting): feel old yet? the first episode of spongebob aired 36 years ago

lying (undershooting): feel old yet? the first episode of spongebob aired 7 years ago

lying by a ridiculous amount (overshooting): feel old yet? the first episode of spongebob aired 900 years ago

lying by a ridiculous amount (undershooting): feel old yet? the first episode of spongebob aired 15 minutes ago

real date of event no one reading was alive for: feel old yet? the great san francisco earthquake happened 118 years ago

real date of event no one reading was alive for or cares about: feel old yet? prince frederick henry died 395 years ago

event no one reading was alive for and also lying: feel old yet? the great san francisco earthquake happened 4 years ago

event that did not happen: feel old yet? brian mulroney was assassinated 48 years ago

event that did not happen and even if it did this would be a lie: feel old yet? brian mulroney was assassinated 197 years ago

real date of event on a cosmological scale: feel old yet? the sun was formed 4,600,000,000 years ago

lying on a cosmological scale (undershooting): feel old yet? the sun was formed 12 years ago

lying on a cosmological scale (overshooting): feel old yet? the first episode of spongebob aired 12,000,000,000 years ago

real date of a personal anecdote that only you know or card about: feel old yet? i made a really good stir fry 5 years ago

reversal: feel young yet? frozen 3 is coming out in 3 years

reversal on a cosmological scale: feel young yet? the sun will collapse in 8,000,000,000 years

reversal (lying about event): feel young yet? the first episode of spongebob will air in 3 years

reversal (lying about time, overshooting): feel young yet? frozen 3 is coming out in 8,000,000,000 years

reversal (lying about time, undershooting): feel young yet? the sun will collapse in 3 years

reversal (lying about time, really undershooting): feel young yet? the sun will collapse in 12 minutes

real date of a recurring event that wasn't very long ago: feel old yet? halloween was 13 days ago

lying about recurring event: feel old yet? halloween was 10,000 years ago

reversal of recurring event: feel young yet? thursday is tomorrow

reversal of personal anecdote: feel young yet? my laundry is done in 52 minutes

real(?) date of a nonspecific event: feel old yet? something happened 2 years ago

lying about the reader (undershooting): feel old yet? you were born 5 years ago

lying about the reader (overshooting): feel old yet? you were born 650 years ago

making a reasonable guess about the reader: feel old yet? you were born 22 years ago

technically telling the truth about the reader: feel old yet? you were born between 0 and 120 years ago

threatening the reader: feel young yet? you will die in 7 days

non sequitur: feel old yet? half of all chameleon species on earth live in madagascar

non sequitur (lying): feel old yet? chameleons are immune to fire

lying on several levels: feel old yet? chameleons were invented 36 years ago

self-reference: feel old yet? i started writing this post 40 minutes ago

giving up: feel old yyet?th e emmenkr,tn dbw a 8 gn m hk\

i can't finish the joke someone else come up with a punchline: feel old yet?

declarative statement: you feel old.

subversive declarative statement: time isn't even real.

reference another meme: feel old yet? yeah. this is the beach that makes you old.

reference another meme specifically about injecting non sequiturs into long posts: feel old yet? the glue that lets you walk up and down anything was invented 36 years ago

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nonbinary jobs:

-server

-hair dresser

-ice cream shop employee

-bowling ally attendant

-art teacher

-barista

-mechanic

-lunch theydy

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4th of July Car launch in Alaska

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Palm oil is really tricky. For the most part, animal fats are highly saturated & solid at room temperature and plant fats are highly unsaturated & liquid at room temperature. Coconut and palm oils are basically the only two exceptions, and as you can imagine, those two plants are both much more space and resource-efficient to farm than, say, dairy cows.

The reason palm oil is such a popular crop and drives so much deforestation is because it's kind of the perfect form of animal fat: not only does it literally grow on trees, but it has over 4x the yield per acre of any other oil crop. That's not to excuse deforestation or slavery or the many many big problems with palm oil production in reality, but my point is that, one, in at least some situations, other plant oils aren't alternatives for palm oil—butter is. And two, even in situations where all fats are interchangeable, there are unfortunately both really good reasons to pick palm oil and really good reasons to avoid it.

are avacados / palm oil any worse for the environment than any other crop?

They’re worse than some crops, but they’re not the worst by any means. That dubious honour probably belongs to alfalfa, which is grown to feed farmed animals.

Avacados are a pretty thirsty crop, as are many crops grown on trees. They use about 140-272 litres to produce a single fruit. That sounds like a lot out of context, and it is, but just by comparison, bananas use 790 litres and apples use 822 litres. Water use does vary depending on where the crop is grown though, wetter climates of course require less watering.

Their carbon emissions are not high, mostly accounted for by transport. The other significant environmental issues are soil degradation (as with any mass grown crop) and deforestation, particularly in Mexico. The thing to remember though is that avocado is often served in salads, on toast etc. where there may have previously been far less sustainable products, like meat.

As with all things, sustainability is relative. A single avocado requires 140-272 litres of water, but the same amount of beef requires 2,315 litres of water. Similarly, the average carbon footprint of one avocado is around 0.19 kilograms of CO2 equivalents, while the same amount of meat produces 4 kilograms. If you’re replacing something like hummus with avocado the impact will be higher, whereas if you’d otherwise be eating meat then it’s a far more sustainable choice.

Palm oil is a tough one because it can be grown quite sustainably, it’s just that conventionally grown palm oil isn’t. It is a major driver of deforestation and habitat loss, again nowhere near as bad as something like beef, but that isn’t what palm oil is replacing. The alternatives for palm oil are almost all more sustainable, including vegetable and olive oil, which isn’t the case with avocados. It is best to just avoid buying products containing palm oil that isn’t RSPO certified. If the ingredients just says ‘palm oil’ then it’s unlikely to be sustainably grown.

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Polynesians did also rely on a form of a physical map called a stick chart, illustrating the specific wave and swell patterns surrounding different island chains. These were particularly helpful during cloudy conditions when the sun and stars were less useful. To navigate the Marshall Islands, the Marshallese represented ocean swell patterns using parts of coconut fronds and shells as islands. Like a subway map, they don’t so much represent distances as they do relationships. The complex and decorative stick charts were often only understood by the person who made them. They were memorised before a voyage by the pilot who would lie on the floor of a canoe to get a sense of swell movement and often lead a squadron of 15 or more boats.

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Melf - Dungeons & Dragons (LJN)

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I need your help with a hypothesis!

For context: My linguistics professor and I got into a discussion after a test she did with us, and I was of the opinion that the reason for the results was different from the one she offered, so she encouraged me to test my theory.

What I need

All you need to do is draw a coffee cup (with a handle, not the disposable stuff) and then answer three questions.

I don't need to see the coffee cup. You can draw it wherever you like; on a piece of paper, digitally, in the sand, on a foggy window. Anything works. It does not have to be good. A doodle is fine.

You have to draw the coffee cup before you see the questions. This is very important. If you decide to help me with this, please doodle the coffee cup before you keep reading.

Assuming you have drawn the coffee cup, I now need you to answer these three questions:

On which side did you draw the handle?

Are you right-handed or left-handed?

Do you primarily write using the Latin alphabet or a different one? (please specify which)

More context

Most people will draw the handle on the right side. My professor says it's because most people are right-handed, so they draw the handle in the direction that would be comfortable for them to pick up.

I said drawing it on the right side just felt more comfortable to my hand and argued it's probably because we write a bunch of letters like that. B, b, D, P, p, R all look like a tiny "handle on the right side" and are all a straight line followed by a round one (so "cup first, handle second," like most people draw cups). The Latin alphabet doesn't have letters like that that face the other way, except maybe d, depending on how you write it, so it makes sense to me that people writing mostly Latin letters would go with the handle on the right side.

Which means that I need to know what Asians, Arabs and Greeks do and if the distribution of left and right sides of handles differs from the Latin alphabet group. Cyrillic seems to favor right, too, though it'd be interesting to see if there are differences.

If there are, my theory is right. Doubly so if there is a sizeable increase in a group whose alphabet has letters that benefit the left side choice.

So feel free to spread this to as many people as you like and put the answers in the comments or the tags of a reblog. The more answers I get, the better I can assess whose theory is better.

Thank you for your help!

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have some em dashes

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my cats so fuckin ugly she looks like the oblivion khajiit

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Young Link (Soprano), Wind Waker Link (Alto), Adult Link (Tenor), and Twilight Princess Link (Bass) wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year with their, er, rousing rendition of a Christmas classic.