#and EVERY ONLINE DICTIONARY DOES THIS

[gunpowder-gemini]

browsing an online dictionary (don't worry about it) and why are there acronyms and phrases in the fucking dictionary???? the dictionary is for WORDS

like if I scroll through the "S" pages

why the FUCK is SEATO in there that's not a WORD it's an acronym define those elsewhere??? I'm looking for words???? WHY IS BY THE SEAT OF THE PANTS THERE THAT'S A FUCKING SENTENCE??????

And straight up MOST sections I've clicked through are just OVERWHELMINGLY acronyms, phrases, places, sayings etc. like why the fuck are those THERE the dictionary is for FUCKING WORDS

[itwoodbeprefect]

i love websites that contain text-based information

[galsinspace]

I always go down weird rabbitholes reading random stuff online but I thought this was really funny lol. All from one long blog post

[mariasont]

SHY!MEDIA-LIAISON!READER

meet the reader! ── .✦ °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

find out what she's listening to ↳ [✧ click to listen ✧]

if you ever wanna see her try to be normal online: ↳ [⋆ click to stalk ⋆] you didn't get this from her.

if you've ever wondered how she always looks like a 2008 indie film extra: ↳ [✿ style breakdown (ish) ✿]

personality

she's the team's new media liaison, which means she's great at writing press releases, answering questions, and managing the public narrative. what she's not good at is everything else socially.

she's soft-spoke, chronically flustered, and deeply committed to making sure no one ever finds out how often she thinks about spencer reid hands. she overthinks everything, replays conversations, and says "um" way too much for someone with a functioning vocabulary. she's polite to a fault, avoids eye contact, and when she does manage to say something bold, she freaks out in the aftermath. it's not that she doesn't have thoughts, she has so many thoughts, she just isn't great at saying them out loud without dying a little.

every crush she's ever had has been a prolonged slow burn built entirely on glances and daydreams. she gets overwhelmed easily, especially by gentle attention, and tries to cope with it by pretending she's totally fine.

but once you actually get to know her ... oh. ohhh. she's all dry wit, sneaky comebacks, and intelligent observations. she has this uncanny ability to read people, to pick up on details other miss, and she can ruin your entire worldview with one delivered comment if she wanted to.

hobbies

collecting vinyl records

annotating books in pencil with neat handwriting and sad little notes like ugh and this made my heart hurt. occasionally circles a line just to come back to it later and cry

making spotify playlists with super specific titles like staring at a ceiling fan in july

watching old interviews and concert footage from artists from the 60s-80s

taking long, aimless walks with no destination

pressing flowers in thick old dictionaries that she rescued from library donation piles. has definitely done this on the job once (sorry, emily)

likes

the sound of a record cracking before the music starts

book dedications that say you know who you are (she absolutely does not know who they are, but still cries about it)

drunk cigarettes

when spencer wears his watch on the inside of his wrist

old store signage with peeled paint and missing letters

highlights in soft ink colors (especially dusty pink and slate blue)

rainy mornings and staying in bed an extra 10 minutes just because

hearing a song she loved in high school

people who ask "did you get home safe?"

old postcards and paper maps.

dislikes

being interrupted

when someone talks over her favorite part of a song

when someone compliments her and she forgets how to respond so she just says you too like an idiot

small talk that feels performative

voicemail

jeans that don't sit right

open office layouts

when someone brings up astrology and says oh you're definitely a [sign] and it's... not hers

when someone knocks on her door and she wasn't expecting anyone

when spencer reads aloud of her shoulder and she forgets how words work

relationships with the team

rossi

affectionately intimidating older man. confusing father figure vibes. he calls her kid and she panics every time like she's being graded. he respects her but teases her mercilessly, always asking if her press statements were "written in sonnets" or if she's "gonna cry over a press releases again."

and she wants to impress him so badly and is lowkey convinced he thinks she's some fragile little mouse. except he does notice when something's off and has a scary-accurate read on her despite never making a big deal out of it.

emily

hyper-competent mentor she's half in love with, half afraid of. emily terrifies her in the beginning, mostly because she's so effortlessly cool and sarcastic and seems like the kind of person who can smell fear. over time, though, emily becomes one of her softest supporters. they bond over books and their shared ability to dissociate at social events.

jj

jj is so good to her it's suspicious. it's too kind. jj is the only one she feels okay being openly anxious around, because jj has that calm, nuturing, steady energy that doesn't really demand anything in return. shy!reader definitely cried in front of her once and jj just held her hands and didn't ask questions.

garcia

chaotic good fairy godmother. constant overstimulation. garcia is overwhelming in the best way. she immediately adopts shy!reader like a puppy she found in the rain. constantly texting her things like "this is your color palette" and "what song would play if you and spencer kissed under starlight?" shy!reader is horrible at texting back, but garcia doesn't care. she sends memes and playlists anyway.

luke

reluctant siblings. emotionally blunt but weirdly gentle. their relationship starts awkwardly. like ... very awkwardly. shy!reader finds him too handsome and too quiet and he finds her kind of emotionally unreadable. he once said "you good?" and she said "what? no. yes. i'm fine. did i do something?" and he just blinked.

but over time they develop a weirdly function dynamic, he doesn't talk a lot, she doesn't need him to. he probably leaves snacks on her desk and calls her silent but deadly.

tara

academic respect with real emotional undertow. i think they bond over psychology and trauma research first. tara sees her, really sees her, understands how someone can be so emotionally intelligent and still struggle to speak up in a room. shy!reader looks up to her so much it almost hurts. their conversations are deep, infrequent, and always hit too hard.

matt

respectful distance + weird shared humor. matt is a little too normal. he has kids. he reads the room well. at first, they don't talk much. he doesn't push her, and she appreciates that more than she can say. eventually, they bond over something stupid (maybe some press conference or someone mispronouncing her name) and now they share this deeply specific deadpan humor that no one really gets. he's protective of her in that dad friend way. never patronizing thought.

[cryptocism]

I got some questions if that’s ok? lol

1: has Thad ever admitted his feelings to Kon? (Probably not lol)

2: let’s say Thad does, what’s Kon’s reaction?

3: got any headcanons/triva stuff for Thad?

4: what about Bart?

oh boy ill do my best to give decent answers!

1: hmm i think it would depend on the circumstances? but overall ur right probably not haha. Thad navigating new and terrifying relationships in an absurdly neurotic and dramatic way is one of my favourite avenues to take his character so if he ever DID it would have to be extremely embarrassing for everyone involved

2: ppl may have gathered im a big fan of unrequited/onesided romance lmao so 90% of the time id say Kon tries to let him down easy

3: ohh Thad headcanons...

i mean piggybacking off of the konthad discussion i do think of Thad having a crush on Kon as a very puppy love/hero worship kind of crush. like i can't really see them in a real relationship bc im too attached to Thad putting Kon on a pedestal lmaoo. like here's this guy who is also a clone but still has his own identity/life/friends/interests outside of Clark and yet also has an amicable relationship with the guy and his family! it's all Thad has ever wanted!!! and with the rose-coloured lenses on he doesn't clock all the ways Kon actually really struggles with basically all those things.

yall already know abt my goth Thad propaganda which is based on very little except that he'd likely want to differentiate himself from Bart's appearance and a vibe that he's naturally drawn to a darker/edgier aesthetic (based on his palette-swapped black Impulse suit and the needlessly dramatic cloak and the look CRAYDL goes for when they inhabit the technoplasm monster)

^this is a little in conflict with another canon-adjacent headcanon which is Thad's hyperactive level of social awareness. i do think he wants most people to like him unless he's deemed them an enemy, so he fronts a very amicable sociable young man when he's around strangers or people he wants to impress. im reconciling it with the countercultural goth aesthetic by saying he can contain multitudes :P (also i think of Thad as having a delightfully dialectical brain that both desperately wants to be unique and special but also instinctively tries to comply with societal expectations)

not based in canon at all but i think he should be into the kinds of animals people find weird/gross/strange. #1 rat/snake/spider/insect defender he should have a pet snake named cornwallace or something.

4: aand Bart headcanons!

i really like how into video games he is especially in his solo and i would love to see that explored more as a genuine special interest. he tops speedrunning leaderboards and finds the insane easter eggs and secrets. his username (which is either his full legal name or an inscrutable series of numbers and letters no inbetween) becomes infamous in several online circles. ppl beg him to start streaming but Bart doesn't care he's in it for the love of the game

i really enjoy Bart having an eclectic aesthetic big fan of the grunge skater stuff he was wearing in the 90s and in sprinkles throughout the 2000s. one thing abt modern comics that makes me a lil sad is how everyone seems to have the same general sense of style :( (which is more a fault of tight deadlines and lack of characterization rather than the fault of the artists lbr)

the man strikes me as a collectibles guy he likes the fun of tracking down rare trading cards/action figures/etc and the satisfaction of a complete set. i think he would use facebook marketplace worldwide and have endless frustrations trying to communicate with the sellers

i want his having read a whole library to actually have an impact on things so i do think he has a grasp on most latin alphabet languages (having read every X to english dictionary) so his vocabulary is awesome but his grammar and accent are Trash (like he can read signage but struggles to hold a coherent conversation)

[ludolka]

Paranormal Traffic group has my heart in a choke hold <3. If they like go to get dinner after lunch I imagine them ragging on eachother for random things. I.e Joel won't let Jimmy forget he tripped mid sentence and came up with a completely new word (something between a curse word and a censored version)

But Joel and Grians back and fourth is always slightly more pointed, maybe? And everyone else watches them pick on eachother, and perhaps Jim corners him and "Dude either tell him you like him or stop picking on my brother >:T" and Joel blinks and goes "It's all in good fun, ask G, he knows it" and Jimmy taps his fingers, squints and "Hm. At the very least PLEASE stop fueling the 'ship' comments, I beg of you"

This, of course, does nothing.

That makes me so happy to hear :’) they are also so close and dear to me <33

And yess, they totally do that !! They are a friend group first and foremost, they like hanging out outside of filming and I can totally see Joel driving them to a McDonald’s at like 1 or 2 am after a long session and them just joking around in the parking lot while eating or them stopping at some Chinese buffet to grab dinner when they are done earlier

I love the new word invention thing, Jimmy would absolutely do that (though they aren’t PG on this channel) and the rest of the group would adopt that word into their dictionary and use it from then on. They have fun roasting each other after sessions for whatever dumb thing that happened during it that time and laughing about it

And yes, Joel and Grian picking on each other is,, different from how they pick on anyone else. I can see them getting sometimes rather personal, but neither take it to heart and they are cool afterwards like nothing happened. Them arguing over something, saying some rather hurtful shit, only for Grian to stop mid sentence and say something in a completely calm voice like

“Give me some of your fries, I ate mine and I want more”

“Sucks to be you, you should have ordered a large instead of a medium” and still gives him the rest of his fries

And they also have this tendency to both argue about three different topics at once and also to pick up arguing about a topic they started hours or days ago but got interrupted and them just knowing what’s going on while anyone listening in is just very confused and lost

Also Jimmy absolutely hates the ship comments. Maybe to kinda get back at the two and to try to embarrass them, he brings it up during filming once

“Do you guys know people are shipping you? What are your thoughts on that?”

“Shipping us? Shipping us where?”

“Come on Tim, you know that’s both impossible and illegal. Don’t be dumb and believe everything you read online”

“Yeah and I mean we are both here, aren’t we? How would we be shipped while also being here? Think Jim”

They absolutely know what he means, but they enjoy tormenting him until he gives up trying to explain it to them. Also whenever Jimmy asks them to tone something down not to fuel commenters or theories, nothing ever changes and sometimes they even play more into it just to mess with Jimmy specifically

Jimmy once asks Joel to tone down the nicknames, so during next filming Joel makes it a point to call Grian baby or sweetheart in every other sentence. Grian picks up on the bit after like the first five “baby”-s in only ten minutes and plays into it, returning the nicknames that he normally wouldn’t and they also spend that session suspiciously not arguing and standing closer to each other than usual

[witchesofvaliant]

A Cautionary Tale

Normally, we're not one to be deeply involved in online drama of any sort, but we don't tend to enjoy seeing injustice, ignorance, and harm come to others and stand by without saying a word if we can help it. I also don't want hate towards the other party involved, and I don't want anyone to target anyone. This isn't a war, this is a disclaimer and word of caution for anyone who is unaware of this situation.

The context:

I joined a discord server that actually originated through a tumblr blog here @atheneum-of-you (She goes by Poppy and will be referred to as this or as "the owner" the rest of the way) and while I hoped for the best, what I found was a fairly dangerous community in terms of helpol communities that can be found online, and after simply communicating my discontent with the owner over her passive aggressive attitude, and after trying to communicate logic in a mess of chaos, I was publicly made fun of and kicked, with the staff and friends of staff continuously and publicly joking about their actions.

Honestly? I'm not upset at that, I am however concerned about the issues that this incident exposed along with multiple others that we will get to along the rest of this post.

1: Religious Misguidance & Cult Practice

Now the primary issue of all here, so your time isn't wasted by reading this VERY long post.. The owner and the cult mentality surrounding the server. Poppy has established herself as the resident priestess under Hermes, and creating an environment that has shown time and again, that if you are in good graces with her and in agreement with all she says, then all is good, your life and your religious practice and spirit is well and your wellbeing with your deities is in good hands. She claims to be able to speak to the gods to tell others what the gods think of them, and others in the server are ridiculed, ignored, warned, or just outright banned, when disagreeing or simply trying to educate her and others with another perspective on a topic concerning practice and belief. Any ideas offered on protection, cleansing, or even just other ways to practice in having a relationship to the gods are met with ridicule and ignorance, with many members outright refusing to believe or listen to suggestions of cleansing stating that they are not "witches" and do not perform "witchcraft", funny enough, many religions support cleansing as an actual practice (holy water is one example of this). All actions taken by the majority of members, tend to be to crowd around the owner and to act nearly with praise toward her, approving of her every word, and hanging on in desperation for her readings (as just one example). But here, I'd just be going around in circles at this point, so here's an excerpt from this site on the psychology of cults: "Let’s start with a definition of “cult” from the APA Dictionary of Psychology as a baseline:  “n. 1. a religious or quasi-religious group characterized by unusual or atypical beliefs, seclusion from the outside world, and an authoritarian structure. Cults tend to be highly cohesive, well organized, secretive, and hostile to nonmembers.” " - This does coincide with the religious nature of the server and the lack of focus on education on outside topics, instead being reliant on Poppy's word and only her word. "Most cults share some common traits:  

They’re usually led by a charismatic individual whom the members worship without question. 

Cult members often live together in their own dedicated community. " - This does agree with it being led by Poppy, who constantly has shown a kind and good-natured intent, with deep-seated passive aggressiveness when given any form of genuine objection.

"The Psychology of Cults: How They Lure People In and Take Control 

Cults recruit new members anywhere you might expect to meet new people: social media, discussion groups, community clubs, events, and the like. These are typically nonthreatening, public situations that would not cause anyone to be suspicious. Cult recruiters get to know as much as they can about people and identify individuals who may be receptive to meeting a group of the recruiter’s friends at dinner or another social event. Though the chosen targets are generally unaware, these seemingly innocent gestures are the first steps to being drawn into a cult.   Obvious enough, but this speaks to the unknowing people that go into this seeking a kind community within helpol, getting to know the person happens automatically within the server, especially with introductions and so on.

Targeting Vulnerable Prey 

Receptive people are those who are looking to escape something—such as an unhappy life situation—and to belong, be accepted, and find meaning. Cults prey upon the vulnerable among us, such as teenage runaways, drug addicts, abuse survivors, those who have lost someone close to them through death or a breakup, those suffering from insecurity or mental health issues, or anyone who feels disconnected from society.  I myself had done readings for several people within the server, all of them in desperate need of guidance, and many admitting to needing their deities and even Poppy's help as they don't know how to live without either one of the two or both. And again, many in this server are definitely minors as well.

Drawing in Recruits 

Once the potential recruit is in the presence of cult members, typically still oblivious to the group’s agenda, they are showered with love and validation. This tactic, referred to as “love bombing,” makes the recruit believe they’ve found what they’re looking for and more likely to return for group activities in the future. This is critical in the early stages of cult indoctrination since the recruit is not yet under their influence and needs to feel secure.  The love bombing is done primarily by Poppy and the constant drilling that the deities are all telling her that you are definitely on the right path and need to keep going and keep devoting, as well as the seeming constant extreme kindness from Poppy (saying literally they are a "found family"), and after that, there's the many posts of documentation from Poppy literally named "lessons" on how you should practice that you are encouraged to read through (As well as other documentation written throughout the server on how to practice also written by her).

Taking Control  

As they indoctrinate new members, many cults separate them from their families, friends, and jobs, slowly remaking their identities to suit the group. They may force recruits to surrender their money, belongings, and bodies to the cult’s leader and other members. Sometimes they compel new members to marry people they just met. They may use punishment, deprivation, and other tactics to wear them down. These efforts, which sometimes include threats, make new members dependent on and afraid to leave the group. Fully indoctrinated members often engage in behavior they never would’ve considered in their former lives. " Members are encouraged to commit FULLY to the deities and give over their lives to them, there is a culture already established where the members are speaking constantly as if every single little thing in their life is to be devoted to the gods, and as if the gods are responsible for every little aspect of their life. There is a constant "joke" of how you should not push the owner or she'll ban, and I was quite literally told "You should watch how you act with our priestess", which I would say is evidence enough to prove this fact as well.

2: Racism

So, for the record, I am a large mix of cultures and backgrounds just within my immediate family, and within the last two generations of my family. I primarily identify with being Latino from Puerto Rico, but I am also of Indigenous background through my Puerto Rican ancestry (Taino tribe), I have Spaniard in me, Trinidadian and Jamaican, as well as British, and that is what I know of and am closest to. With that said, I go to the BIPOC channel they have in this server, and see several Latinos from various Latin countries, talking about how people from the US, especially Latinos from the US just don't understand how things work outside of the US and aside from making some other crude jokes on this, they start calling us gringos, which for context, can be used as a derogatory word/slur in many uses, meaning someone involved in white American culture or a white person (especially from the US), it was inappropriate, and after bringing it to the owner's attention, she proceeds to ban the word, but still not bring any justice to the people using it after they continued to defend using a slur and using it AS a slur, and she seemed to have needed my help in explaining to her, because she was not a part of the "Latino community" why that word is negative. I would think seeing it being used in negative context would provide the common sense to ban use, but she and other mods did admit not even moderating that chat and many others, so I digress.

3: Minors and Adult Content

This server is not 18+, now that's fine, but when doing so, especially with it being run by a supposed adult, that adult must have measures in place for minors to be safe in an online space, at least when that is a primary concern for you. The server has roles that only go down to 15 y/o, and if the server is restricted to that, there is no way for mods to genuinely tell such a thing as many minors lie about their age, and Discord allows ages as young as 13. Now, again, if you are putting measures in place for them, that's fine, but the NSFW/Adult channel is not truly safeguarded. All one needs to do is have a role for it and boom you're in! Of course, I have seen some "wonderful" adult content casually spoken about outside of that channel anyway, so it isn't as if it truly matters then. Sex-related things, and especially smut fiction is joked and SHOWN casually in several areas of the server.

4: Godspousal

I'm jumping straight into this one because this links with the previous point made in some ways. The channel focused around this is also only blocked by an adult age role, and that's a real shame, as there is no other protection for minors to just go in and start seeing casual talk about godspousal relationships with their "dad". What does that mean? Well, they'll call any close relationship with a deity a godspousal at this point. Familial, sibling-like, romantic, sexual, it doesn't matter, they can all be godspousal relationships. You decide if that sounds screwed up or not, but I don't agree with casual talk of incest.

5: Inappropriate Treatment for LGBT+ & Neurodivergent

Speaking of having used slurs, there are separate chats for neurodivergent and LGBT+ people there, let's start with the neurodivergent channel, where people start using "neurospicy" to joke about neurodivergent terms and to use it jokingly, now at this point, another member had informed people, and myself as I hadn't been aware of this either, that the term above was originally developed as a slur/infantilization towards neurodivergent people, mentioning also that the term "weeb" was also created as a slur towards the Japanese, and the response of all in the chat was to blatantly joke and continue using the words and proceed to ignore the member who was informing others about the issue. Moving on to the newly created LGBT+ channel, after calling it "skittles", they proceed to introduce themselves like they're in an AA group, with their name, and then LGBT+ orientation, you decide if that's a little uncomfortable to act like it's all a game and a trend, saying things like "princess is my gender" by the owner herself, and another member using "transwomen" as a gender because they just feel like it, and to each their own, but as a plural system, and someone not against endogenic systems, that's not what was being talked about, instead this was along the vibe of the latest trend found on tumblr and reddit.

6: Priesthood & A Cycle Created

Now, in this, there are multiple pieces to speak of that are cause for concern. Of course, this is a community centered around a religious community, so this would be the largest part to hold concern over, and while godspousal and cult practice was spoken of above, I want to speak of another major focus of this server: priesthood. The server was created by someone who claims they are a priestess to Hermes, and seeks to motivate many others, including a minor who is completely new to this situation into priesthood for the gods. There are many instances where people with little understanding of what they're even doing, little experience even understanding the gods, and little awareness of who they are even following with barely any time spent following these deities. While I dare not judge others' beliefs, practices, or experience, the true concern is that this is a cycle within the server to motivate or believe you can become a priest/priestess to a deity in no time, and being "training" at which point you must be absolutely devoted, and that the owner, Poppy, must be approving of your relation to the deity (and thus has the power to tell you that you can be a priest/priestess to that deity), but if a reading from her says differently, then you MUST rethink your entire life decisions (But that much was already mentioned in the first section). This cycle of believed intense devotion and living life FOR the deities creates an unhealthy fixation in many who understand no other way to worship or even live, and devote their entire life, health, body, and mind to deities, crediting everything to their deities, at this point, turning what is a non-organized religion into an organized religion reminiscent of strict Christian practices.

Conclusion

With all that said, I genuinely write this wishing that the members of the server will open their minds, think deeply and reflect on the people they are affecting with this. If you want to have a fun community to enjoy each others' company, then make that, but don't turn it into what is a religious community server that looks as if it is meant to teach and preach certain beliefs, even contradicting a supposed want for freedom and openness to all beliefs and religions/practices. I dearly wish the best for those in that server/community in the end, and only seek to educate and as the title says, provide a cautionary tale, especially so the younger audiences involved understand that there is much more out there that is safer and healthier for them than this environment and the ideas that they have been led to believe are healthy for them. All the best to anyone who sees this. <3

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

If there are any linguistics professionals reading this, I could use some help.

I'm doing research into Proto-Indo-European, the mother tongue of much of Europe and South Asia, and I recently discovered Schleicher's Fable, a short story about sheep and horses which has been translated into a dozen proto-languages to show how different branches envolved over the millennia.

My problem is that I don't know the word order or declensions (suffixes for different conjugations) of any of these languages, so I have no idea which words mean what throughout the text.

I know owis/hovis/avis means sheep (same etymology as modern English "ewe")

Ekwos means horse (equus, equestrian, etc.)

Wlna/wlana/vilno means wool

Oinom/aikam/enem means one

Krd/kart/sird means heart (cardio)

Widntei/widntbhos means see/seeing/sight (video/visual)

I think agnutai/egnutoi means hurt or pain (agony) but I don't know for sure

Same with megehm/megam for big (presumably like mega/magnum)

I can recognize a handful of other words from context, but some sentences completely confuse me. The phrase "heavy wagon" appears to be "woghom wegontm," both words of which look like they possibly share the same root, but I don't know which means heavy and which means wagon. All the variations of "dgmonm oku bherontm" mean "carry a man quickly," but I don't know which words corresponds to carry, man, or quickly. I think bherontm means carry because it has the -ontm suffix which I think marks a verb, but again, I just don't know.

I don't know the words for "the master makes the wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself" or "the sheep fled into the plain." It's helpful that the story is broken down into lines, but it doesn't explain what each individual word means in order, so I don't know the proper translation.

Does anyone know where I can find an in depth breakdown of Schleicher's Fable with every word and declension annotated? I've tried looking up Proto-Indo-European glossaries/dictionaries online, but every corpus spells the words differently (lots of subscript letters and numbers and asterisks), some words have multiple PIE translations and no two sites agree on which to use when. It's not helpful at all.

I need a word-by-word translation, something like:

PIE: owis kwesjo wlna na est ekwoms speket

Literal: sheep which wool no have horses saw

English: a sheep which had no wool saw horses

Does anyone know where I can find the proper resources for this project?

[deafaq]

What kind of technology do you think would help d/Deaf / HoH people in the future? Should there be more research into improving hearing aids, or making real-time captioning glasses, or maybe AI that can translate sign language instead of a human interpreter? What would be super useful if it existed?

Hello,

hearing loss is very varied, as are the types of communication people use. As such, I wouldn't focus on one single technology, since it wouldn't fit all deaf people.

Hearing aids can't be much improved, imo - they work on making sounds louder for existing hearing. They can be fine tuned, but they are more akin to glasses. The biggest issue with hearing aids isn't technology, but their price - they often aren't covered by insurance and as such, remain inaccessible for lot of people. There is also a significant stigma about their usage, esp for people who lose hearing later in life and discomfort with using them. I think that should be the priority.

Cochlear implants are a hearing device which can still be improved and does keep improving every year. Ideal end goal would be hearing identical to natural hearing and smaller size of implant. Current implants do work well, but sounds from them are different compared to "ordinary" hearing (more robotized, less fine) and they are still fairly big. Of course, you can't make them too small, otherwise you wouldn't be able to operate them. And same as hearing aids, price remains a problem - not just price of surgery and implant itself, but of batteries and upkeep.

I would honestly love real time caption glasses! They do exist in some way nowadays, but not in any practical form. One of the biggest issues is that automatic caption is still pretty... hit or miss. Especially in louder environments, extra especially if your language isn't English. I do think its a neat technology that could be useful, but we are far from its ideal existence. (not to mention, problems with privacy, connection to internet, how to power them, price, etc etc.)

There already has been some attempts into artificial interpreter, but nothing really workable. Big issue is that you need both technology that produces very fine tuned movement of all top parts of body (including face expressions) and is able to capture movement and recognize movement. Another issue is that you would need to have a workable library of all signs in a specific sign language. ASL is probably the closest to it, but it would need to be likely captured for that technology specifically and that's insane amounts of work. Unlike with written English, you can't just scrape internet for signs - they are in various video forms, differ slightly, lot of signs aren't on internet at all... To have AI interpreter, you first need to have a great, indexed sign language dictionary and that doesn't really exist at the moment.

(there are various online dictionaries but their quality... is in my opinion not up to par for this)

The biggest problem often isn't technical limit of technology itself, but the amount of time and money it would need for these technologies to exist. That's why cochlear implants get most "updates", bcs its funded by big medical companies and it brings lot of money.

In ideal world, I would love to have all of these technologies. If you focus on just one, you risk leaving part of community in the lurch. Not all deaf/hoh people use sign language. Not all deaf/hoh people want or can use hearing aids or cochlear implants. Not all deaf/hoh people are good readers (either due language issues or additional disabilities).

Hope this helped,

Mod T

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

It's very annoying and unproductive when you know more words than the spellcheck does, and you have to stop and go check an online dictionary every time it tells you you've misspelled something.

[useless-catalanfacts]

Hola!

I know that inclusive grammar is oftentimes not set in stones.

From quick research, I understand that “elli” is one suggested gender neutral pronoun in Català. Is there an accepted inclusive definite article like “el,” “la,” outside of the confusing to speak suggestions with “x”.

It is an earnest ask as I don’t see any info online in the places I am looking.

Thank you in advance and thank you for sharing your knowledge on Catalan culture.

Hello! Thank you :D

Yes, there is. Every word (determinants, adjectives, nouns, pronouns, etc) are turned into non-binary grammatical gender by taking the feminine version and changing the gender marker -a for -i (in the case of singular) or -es for -is (in the case of plurals). Thus, the article is "li" (singular) or "lis" (plural).

I would also like to clear up a couple of minor things from the ask, I'll add the whole answer under a cut because it's a bit long.

You mentioned an "accepted" article. Accepted by who? Do you mean widely accepted by speakers, or accepted by the official institutions that regulate the standard and make dictionaries? Because those are very different questions.

Being used and understood by speakers comes first, and only after it is widespread do the academies incorporate it in their standards, dictionaries and lists. A dictionary is never a place to propose new words, only to compile the ones already part of the language. That's why academies that make dictionaries and regulate the standard, regardless of how much they want to, just can't add new things so quickly, they must wait to see if a trend really ends up becoming part of the language of if it's a short-lived trend that leaves and never takes root.

The third grammatical gender is still a recent proposal which many speakers haven't heard of, don't know how to use and don't understand (in fact, they would understand a different thing if they heard it*). For this reason, it's too soon to talk about being included by language academies. But yes, the -i ending (including elli) is the most used and most widely accepted proposal of third grammatical gender.

*replacing the vowels for the vowel "i" has always been used as a way to ridiculize a sentence, way before the -i got proposed for a non-binary grammatical gender, so people who are not familiar with this new proposal will likely interpret it as a joke.

So from now on I will answer assuming we mean what is the most widely used or socially accepted (which is what I assume you meant anyway), because as we've established it's too early to talk about being or not being accepted by official academies.

2. We are talking about third grammatical gender or non-binary grammatical gender, not gender-neutral.

In English, the singular "they" is used as a gender-neutral pronoun when we don't know the gender of the person we're talking about, but Catalan and most other Romance languages don't have this. The idea that has been proposed is a new, third grammatical gender which is neither male nor female. This third grammatical gender is used by non-binary people who prefer to use neither male nor female. But if it were gender-neutral we would use it to talk about people who aren't non-binary or for mixed grammatical genders (remember that grammatical gender does not equal human gender, the word is only a coincidence and in many cases it could be better translated as "type", "class" or "genre"), for example "there they are, the dishes and the mugs" = "allà els tenim, els plats i les tasses". We use the unmarked/masculine for that, but there's some people who also have other proposals but that's a whole other very, very long conversation.

Same goes for people, we don't use the third grammatical gender when we don't know someone's gender, unlike English this isn't part of our language. We simply tend to add the multiple options. Until now it was 2 (male and female), now it should be 3. In some other occasions, people might use the unmarked/masculine or write in reference to "person" (can be an elliptical construction that simply looks like a feminine sentence).

3. The -x.

You also mention the confusing -x. Luckily the -x is not commonly used here. It's not very useful because it's very online-only (it can't be pronounced, so it can never become part of the language more than just virtue-signaling in written form).

It's normal to have to try out different forms before finding out what will work, but we're lucky that this one never really took root because it will be easier to teach directly the new one (-i) to the broader public who isn't as invested in this.

That being said, going back to your question:

"Elli" is the personal neopronoun (equivalent to ell and ella), as you said, and the -i termination is the proposed new grammatical gender. It must be the -i because it's the only vowel in Catalan that isn't directly associated with one of the two other existing grammatical genders: -a is used for the singular feminine, -e is used for the plural feminine (as well as singular feminine in some accents), -o and -u are used for the plural unmarked/masculine. The singular unmarked/masculine grammatical gender in Catalan doesn't have an ending, so it can end in any letter (including -i). Thus, only -i is (most times) left, even though it's already used as an end in some pronouns (like "hi", meaning "there", "-li" meaning "to him" or "to her", etc). So the rule is this: for every gendered word (nouns, adjectives, pronouns, etc) just take the feminine form and in singular change the -a for -i, or in plural change the -es for -is.

The article would work the same way: li. For example:

♂️: El mestre és alt. Els mestres són alts.

♀️: La mestra és alta. Les mestres són altes.

Neo: Li mestri és alti. Lis mestris són altis.

If you want to know more details about this new proposal, there's a book called Guia gramatical de llenguatge no-binari that explains everything.

I hope this answers your question! And thank you very much for your interest.

[skopostheorie]

I'm not kidding about the title. I started with going through how cases in Ancient Greek worked. This took, like. Half an hour I want to say. Because I didn't need to Memorise it I just needed to know how declensions worked as a basic rule and which ones were used for which directions. Then I was like okay easy I have an ancient Greek dictionary already I'll just use that. I'll find the word "ship" and decline it. Mario is Odysseus in this story and he is nearly pulled FROM the ship (aka Shipshape) by the siren but goes BACK to it. A neat bow to tie it up. The problem is that. My ancient Greek dictionary (as with most dead language dictionaries) does not go in both directions (i.e. NOT english->AG, just AG->English). So it's useless. I get my MODERN Greek dictionary and find the word for ship. And then I use that to cross search in the AG one and hope they're the same. They share a root so I eventually find it. Let me emphasise I only JUST know the alphabet at this stage so this is taking a lot of effort. But I'm like okay good yes. I decline the noun. It has been about an hour of this. Title is done. Yay. Good.

But then. What do I discover? Oh no. Ancient Greek and Homeric Greek ARE NOT THE SAME. and I do not have a Homeric Greek dictionary and even if I did I would have the same problem. So I'm like. Okay. And I find the odyssey in Greek online. And I find it in English online. And I read until I find a line that mentions the word "ship" so I can cross check it with the Greek and use that word. Of course, I don't know which word it would be, so I have to look up every single word in the sentence until I find the one. This takes fucking forever. And the word shares no root whatsoever with the Ancient or Modern Greek word. So I don't even have any clues. Eventually. Like I think after 20 minutes . I find it. I Wiktionary that shit. They're already on a declension table thank god. Copy. Paste. Done.

And that's the story of how a title took about 2 hours to do

[workingchemistry]

So Resh is to Rex as Kote is to Cody? What does Resh mean I’m not quite picking up what put down in the fic

Pretty much. I don’t like any of the other explanations I’ve seen for Rex and wanted Fox to be the one to name him and so I wanted it to have meaning. I looked through the mando’a online dictionary for similar sounding words and decided to have Shereshoy be Rex’s given clone name.

Resh itself doesn’t have a meaning afaik. It’s a nickname from the mando’a shereshoy. Directly quoting mandocreator.com

Shreshoy: lust for life and much more - uniquely Mandalorian word, meaning the enjoyment of each day and the determination to seek and grab every possible experience, as well as surviving to see the next day - hanging onto life and relishing it. An understandable state of mind for a warrior people. Closely related to the words for live, hunt and stay safe - and, of course oya. All from the same root.

Basically Fox names Rex Shereshoy as a giant fuck you to the kaminoans who were looking to decom him for being defective. It immediately got shortened to Resh and then Rex became his natborn name like Cody is Kote’s natborn name. They have natborn names while Ponds, Bly, and Wolffe didn’t bother and went straight from numbers to their clone names once they trusted their Jedi. Fox is the only one from the batch to stick with just his serial for natborns but he’s far from the only clone to do it.

[classicjdiesandgoestohell]

i study 2 languages, norwegian and swahili, and the differences between their resources kind of drives me insane.

norwegian has 5 million speakers. it has courses on any language learning platform you can think of. the norwegian learning subreddit has 58k members - a bunch of passionate learners and natives who answer questions. in the last year ive managed to find 12 books in norwegian at thrift stores, book warehouses, etc. never even bothered to get some online because of this! you can watch basically any show you want in it, or at least with subtitles.

what does swahili have? swahili has around 100~ million speakers, making it the most spoken language in africa (excluding colonizer languages like french and arabic). most platforms dont have a course for it, but the few that do are incredibly poorly made and almost impossible to use to learn with. the swahili learning subreddit has only 6.7k members (and most of these people have personal ties like family, as opposed to norwegian where people just learn it randomly for fun). i have never found ANY books IN swahili. ive found two dictionaries, and they were both at speciality stores (unlike norwegian which ive found at my usual medium sized town thrift store). virtually nothing is translated to swahili. not even the fucking Lion King, which uses words from the swahili language (hakuna matata, simba, rafiki, mufasa).

im not expecting tanzania and kenya to translate every western movie ever, they have their own stories to tell (as well as some government censorship), but thats not the whole story. the west has no interest in giving their stories to africa and they have no interest in translating african stories to english.

and like. I understand Why these disparities exist. due to colonization and therefore lower education levels, there are less books in swahili in the first place. people would rather learn a language with grammar and vocabulary similarities to their own, like an indo european language. but the difference is actually fucking absurd. a language with 100 million speakers should not have this few resources. with norwegian, i could always google any niche grammar question i had and find someone online asking the same question. with swahili, i have to search through decades old grammar guides in search of an answer on my own.

swahili is a beautiful language. it has the most consistent grammar of any language ive studied. i wish more people were interested in it, in ANY african language. i cannot imagine what resources are like for literally any other african language! i want people to care to learn these languages the way that people randomly decide to learn lithuanian, estonian, and other smaller european languages. i want their resources to be greater, more courses to be created, more books to be written, more translations to bridge the gaps between cultures.

[bookmarksandbonfires]

All of this talk about @taylorswift's new album is really just proving to me that people have no idea what poetry is??? Like every time I see a post online someone's put in the comments "wow how poetic touch me while your boys play grand theft auto" or "that metaphor is so obvious how can you say her lyrics are poetry" or whatever and like I get it. The Poetry you had to read in high school felt Incomprehensible and you were Bad At Analyzing It. I felt that way too, and I got a degree in literature.

But "Incomprehensible" is not in the definition of poetry. It doesn't need to be endlessly complex with allusions and metaphors you'll never be able to unravel. The Google definition (from the Oxford dictionary) is:

All poetry has to do is be words that express meaning and have rhythm. (That's basically all songs.) There's nothing in the definition about how you should be unable to parse all the meanings behind it. If you hear a collection of words that make you feel something, that's poetry. It just is.

Or, to quote Wordsworth, poetry is "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings," which he believed should be written in plain language, and since there's a heavy Gothic/Romantic strain in Tortured Poets Department, I think it's reasonable we should default to a definition from that school of thought.

Poetry does not have to be incomprehensible to be meaningful. You can feel something because of the specific words in their specific arrangements, or the literary devices utilized, or even just the rhythm in which they are spoken. It doesn't have to have you getting out a dictionary or diagramming the sentences or spending hours trying to guess what the author really means. It can just make you feel.

I don't know if Taylor Swift is the greatest poet of our generation or whatever. But to say her songs aren't poetry because you think you understand them is belittling and reducing poetry to something it never has been.

[youkaigakkou-tl]

(I don't know how to read japanese, and my speech is loosely based on anime, so apologies if I'm completely off target...)

I'm fascinated with etymology and like looking/studying the potential meaning behind the characters name, especially when names are a word play on the nose regarding their abilities.

I looked on an "online dictionary for Youkais", and most of the translations contain the word "Monk" in the name.

Regarding what had been said in YoHaji, about humans becoming Youkais after commiting a crime (sin?), does it means the first Youkais were unfaithful monks?

(sorry for the long ask, unable to word stuff concisely==;)

this is actually something that has plagued me for literal years, words for "monk" being in youkai names. im just not good enough at japanese to read analysis by japanese folklorists myself, and this is perhaps too obscure of a topic for there to be translations of. (an obscure linguistic detail of youkai, an already somewhat niche topic)

to preface, the words that often appear in youkai names and mean "monk" or some other position in a buddhist temple, are:

kozou (小僧): lit. "Little monk"; also just used as a word for "child"

nyuudou (入道): lit. "Entering the (buddhist) way"; someone who has shaved their head and entered buddhism.

bouzu (坊主): lit. "Owner of the monastery"; but later became a general word for monks.

douji (童子): lit. "child"; but in the context of buddhism, this is used as the translation for the sanskrit word "kumāra", and refers to children who become disciples at a buddhist temple and do servant work for the most part.

if i may be so bold, i think there's (at least) 2 layers to this

layer 1: it's a superficial resemblance

this seems to be the most common take i've seen.

most of the youkai that have these in the name have some superficial resemblance, whether they're described as having bald heads, or maybe they're seen walking slowly alone at night, perhaps chanting something to themselves. this is somewhat to the effect of calling something "the bald monster", wherein it gives a superficial image of how to know when you've seen this "thing".

and for some cases, mostly with the word "kozou", the word is just used as a general term for "boy" or "person", much like we have words like babygirl and catboy (which unexpectedly does not have an exact japanese equivalent, now that i think about it. closest thing thats used casually is nekomimi) perhaps just as we find the use of words that mean "boy" but also "monk" in youkai names strange, someone from a different background might find it strange that the combination of "baby" and "girl" refers to a disheveled adult man, or that catboy can refer to an adult man with cat traits even though "boy" clearly insinuates "child".

although, it's hard to tell what the original form of such youkai with these words in the name were or were intended to be, and how much of their visual resemblance to monks by artists who came afterwards was inspired by the fact that a word for "monk" was in the name. chicken and egg problem. (much like how youkai media nowadays, and series that involve humanized versions of inanimate objects use past stories and etymology to inspire their look. the artists of old probably didn't expect the works they left behind to be used as a record of what life was like back then, imagine if future historians use FGO and touken ranbu as historical reference LOL)

the idea of these youkai being something that became of a monk for one reason or another seems to be present in english perspectives on youkai, although not corroborated by japanese authors, so perhaps this is again a case of inferring and assigning meaning that wasn't there, or wasn't meant to be there. (source)

but this all begs the question...

layer 2: what does it mean linguistically?

the word for "child" also meaning "monk" is strange and specific, isn't it? or is it the other way around?

im so mad. its like this every time. when i trace every question about japanese linguistics or folklore back to the source it always goes all the way back to 1500 years ago (about 5th century AD) to the arrival of buddhism and the advent of written records in japan!!!! im not a linguist or historian im not good enough to disentangle all this!!!! or keep all my history facts straight!!!

the long and short of it is, buddhism contributed a large part to the advent of writing in japan, with the importance it placed in copying scriptures. buddhism was largely influential throughout early japan written history, and prior to the heian era was incorporated into the governance system. the heian era saw the founding of enryaku-ji on mount hiei, one of the most influential temples of the time and origin of the tendai school of buddhism, which was the leading school at the time, and founders of later schools of buddhism in japan almost all originated from it. this is all to say, enryaku-ji and mount hiei are two very prominent locations that appear in a lot of folklore and youkai stories.

mentioned in the essay "story of the shinoda wife" by folklorist orikuchi shinobu are "doji villages", specifically mentioned in the context of mount hiei, which are servant villages to buddhist temples, where the children go to work in the temple and are called "douji", which in turn becomes what their villages are called. the fact that he goes into detail about what these are, and also explains the use of "douji" to refer to buddhist child disciples rather than just "child" in general, could mean that these are particularly obscure tidbits.

(i actually came across this essay when i was looking up kuzunoha, and the play where abe no seimei was named "doji" as a child. orikuchi posits that monks started a temple in the village called abeno, and so "abeno doji" became a familiar phrase to locals, and so it became part of stories and plays)

if i may be so bold as to make assumptions, i think its possible that monks, who were influential, literate, and the source of not an insignificant amount of literature from the time, referred to figures in stories with honorifics from the organizational structure they're familiar with, and common folk adopted the vocabulary too. (this is perhaps similar to how you're referred to with honorifics like "sir" or "madam" in letters from official organizations even if you're not necessarily on the same level of importance as the person the letter represents.)

of course, this is just assumptions, and if i had any concrete conclusions this wouldnt have and continue to plague me for years.

resources:

hyakumonogatari.com - a huge blog of translations of essays on youkai

kotobank.jp - japanese dictionary thats particularly good for words with more cultural background

japanesewiki.com - an accurately, manually translated resource of the japanese version of japan cultural wikipedia pages

Shinoda Tsuma no Hanashi by Orikuchi Shinobu - an analysis essay on the play "Ashiya Douman Ouchi Kagami" (which is actually about abe no seimei LMAO and prominently features kuzunoha), doesnt have a english translation

The Artist is Absent (The Beginners Guide analysis) by Innuendo Studios - yeah this one isnt relevant at all. its a literary analysis of the videogame The Beginner's Guide (2015). but i just think anyone who wants to do any amount of thinking about stories and folklore should watch this video and also play this game.