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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.

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have some em dashes

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We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

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Grotto:

This thing is a kind of place. Sometimes there is not this thing, then something happens and after some time there is nothing where there was something. This nothing is a place where someone can live for a short time.

Sometimes people want this kind of place. These people do this something. These things can be inside gardens[m]. Sometimes people live inside these things. There are people who will be inside these things and live in them. Some people have lived like this for a long time.

Sometimes someone has something else.

This thing is small. They want no bad thing to happen to this other thing, like they want no bad thing to happen to themself. They know people don't live in places where bad things happen to them.

They put this other thing inside one of these things.

When I think of these things, I think like this: "There is no other thing like these things"

These things are grottoes.

Ever since I first heard the word grotto I knew it was a valuable word. When I first heard the word grotto I knew it could be used for great things. The word grotto refers to a cavity in the earth. The word grotto means a small hole or cavern in rock or other substrate like ice, especially when used as shelter. The word grotto is related to crypt, and it is related to grotesque. Grottoes can also be built. Artificial grottoes are sometimes built in gardens. Sometimes people live in grottoes. There have been people that go into grottoes and live in them. There have been people that lived in a grotto for a long time. Sometimes people store food and other supplies in grottoes. Sometimes there are religious things in grottoes. People like to put items in grottos for safekeeping, because grottoes are useful for shelter. When I first saw the word grotto I knew it had a lot of meaning and meant something special. When I think of grottoes I think they are unique.

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Yippee:

There is a man[m]. This person is not real[m]. I see this person. I feel nothing.

Now the same person is in a bad place. This person has been in this place for some time. Many bad things happened to this person. This person feels very bad. This person is like something.

This thing is very small. This thing feels very bad. This thing could be mine. This thing cannot do anything.

Now I feel very good. I can't not say how I feel.

This is yippee.

I see a man (fictional), I am generally like "okay". I see the same man (fictional) being put in a situation, covered in dirt and blood, perhaps soaking wet, actively sobbing and shaking like a chihuahua, and I am saying "yay" and "yippee" and things of this nature

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Ive seen people be like in modern fantasy like "oh the pritagonists can just look up spells on their phone how do you solve that"

Imma be honest most people who go on recipe websites and book every recipe they see don't even use them lmao why would with be different

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“You look at trees and call them ‘trees’, and probably you do not think twice about the word. You call a star a ‘star’, and think nothing more of it. But you must remember that these words, ‘tree’, ‘star’, were (in their original forms) names given to these objects by people with very different views from yours. To you, a tree is simply a vegetable organism, and a star simply a ball of inanimate matter moving along a mathematical course. But the first men to talk of ‘trees’ and ‘stars’ saw things very differently. To them, the world was alive with mythological beings. They saw the stars as living silver, bursting into flame in answer to the eternal music. They saw the sky as a jeweled tent, and the earth as the womb whence all living things have come. To them, the whole of creation was ‘myth-woven and elf patterned’.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien; The Inklings (1978) by Humphrey Carpenter

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"Do you think bugs don't count as animals or something?"

Indeed, many people don't. Most people's everyday language doesn't even consider birds animals!

“And that’s the jury-box,” thought Alice, “and those twelve creatures,” (she was obliged to say “creatures,” you see, because some of them were animals, and some were birds,) “I suppose they are the jurors.” - Alice In Wonderland, chapter XI

[O]ne can hardly imagine anyone saying What a beautiful animal!, referring to a bird. And there are popular books with titles like Birds and Animals of Australia (which wouldn't make sense if birds were a kind of animal) ... [I]n common usage birds are not normally referred to as animals. Not many people would refer to a swallow or a magpie as an animal. Likewise, if someone asks, about an unknown bird What kind of animal is that?, we would want to say It's not an animal. It's a bird. Similarly, insects and fish are not animals in the ordinary sense of the word. It would be peculiar to hear someone say There's an animal on your collar referring to an insect, or to say There were some beautiful animals in the fish-tank. - Semantic Analysis: A Practical Introduction (2nd Ed), chapter 7.2.2

I have personally had funny reactions when I call insects animals (e.g. "There's an animal on my pillow"), because most people where I live have a primary sense for the word "animal" that doesn't include insects (but secondary senses often do).

I wouldn't be at all surprised if most people's primary sense of carnivore is much closer to "something I can imagine eating (part of) a person" than the scientific definition. I know personally that as a child I adamantly felt that insectivores like echidnas and frogs weren't carnivores, and I have no hesitation claiming that most English speakers would likewise not readily consider mosquitos to be carnivores.

(the real answer will be under the cut. pretty pretty please only look after you vote)

without looking it up, just based on your existing perception of whales and their diets, are you under the impression that:

- neither toothed nor baleen whales are carnivores

- toothed whales are carnivores, baleen whales are not

- both toothed and baleen whales are carnivores

- other (???)

- op why are you questioning us about whale diets. what prompted this.