#not only is it a massive troll to English speakers

[icedtoastt]

The 2am uncontrollable urge to change your name

[ambrossart]

Hiii🎈 how are you adapting to your new life after the move and the wedding? Hope everything is great!!

I've been inspired by the last posts with the asks (I love to read them). Aaand I thought of a few questions...I hope not to bother you too much

For DWM, I was thinking...are they going to approach the infamous campaign again? Like, she felt pretty guilty about what happened,are these feelings going to resurface sometime? For example going on dates and doing things together will take them to think/discuss about what could've been if they weren't so stubborn/oblivious?

Eddie said he would ask her out on her freshman year...if she never killed him do you think they would have been friends for the 2 years of distance (middle - high school)? Or they would stop hanging out and just met again when she finally was a freshman?..2 years is A LONG TIME especially at that age.

Also, you wrote that in order to learn d&d she went to play with kids in the Wheeler's basement, is this going to be referenced in the side stories? You hinted Gareth doesn't like her..will the youngest guys of Hellfire have a nice opinion of her?

Finally, not an answer but an appreciation. I'm not a native english speaker so it takes me a while to get all the details. I LOVED the parallels in the chapters for example the openings of chapter 1 and 9, when they were both skeptical. She was caught off guard when Chance invited her to prom because he is popular and on the basketball team while she was just Chrissy's friend. And he was caught off guard because he thought she was popular and he was just the trailer park kid. I don't know if it was intentional but while rereading I was upset I didn't notice it before.

Lastly for Paper men, I was wondering if Evelyn's family will still present in future updates, it's so refreshing to read about a positive-non toxic-supporting family, in such toxic environment. I have to say.. I'm team Vic for the win, as much as Evelyn and Patrick's interactions show really good chemistry and I'm intrigued about her and Henry's past, they are too toxic to deserve that pure little heart.

I always apologize for the long questions but I end up writing more and more each time, so I get it if you don't want to answer.😂

Have a nice weekend 🥰

Hey! I'm almost fully settled in. It's a much smaller apartment than what we're used to, but we're making the best of it. Thanks for asking!

Now, moving on to your questions!

1. In regards to the campaign itself, they're totally gonna replay it at some point over the summer because they never got to finish it together. So once Scottie gets out of prison, they're all gonna sit down and play it again, properly this time, and the Reader will probably be tempted to sacrifice Eddie again, just for giggles. She's such a troll. 😂 But in regards to those feelings of guilt and regret, I think they both would prefer to move past it and focus on the present. They only have a couple months before the Reader leaves for college, and they don't wanna waste time dwelling on the past. They've already had their big heart-to-heart. Now they just wanna enjoy their time together. But as we get closer to the end of summer, I think a lot of those old feelings will inevitably resurface because neither of them knows what will happen. I wouldn't be surprised if the Reader has a massive anxiety attack. She might even consider breaking up with him in order to spare herself the heartache of another separation because it would be 100x more painful than before. She's not a kid with a crush. She's a woman in love. The more time they spend together, the stronger her feelings get, which means she has a lot more to lose, so I could definitely see that triggering another fight-or-flight response.

2. If she hadn't betrayed Eddie, they would have absolutely remained friends during those two years. Yes, it is a long time, but Eddie is a very loyal person and he values his friends (because he doesn't have that many). This is something Eddie wishes he had told her when they were kids, but that would have meant putting himself out there and opening himself to potential hurt. At that point, Eddie wasn't 100% sure of the Reader's intentions (if she genuinely wanted to be his friend or if she had some kinda ulterior motive) and, like you said, two years is a long time. A lot could happen in two years. She could be fully embraced by the popular kids and not need him anymore. That uncertainly alone would make him hesitate. But yes, if Eddie had reassured her, if she hadn't betrayed him, they would have stayed friends and let their romantic relationship naturally develop over time. It would've been like this unspoken thing between them. They both would just know that eventually they'll start dating, and neither of them would be in any rush to get to the finish line. They'll be perfectly happy and content with their friendship and then take that next step when the time is right, which would probably be when the Reader's about 15.

And let me just say, Eddie would be SO FREAKIN EXCITED to have her in school with him again. If he has his license, he's picking her up and driving her to school. If he doesn't, he's gonna be waiting for her in front of the building (like she used to wait for him 🥺), ready to give her a private tour. He's been waiting two years for this day, so he's gonna do whatever he can to make it special.

3. You know, I was going to include a scene of all the boys trying to teach her D&D (and given how bad she is at the game, clearly none of their lessons sank in 😂), but there just wasn't enough content there. I imagine at first they would be super eager to teach someone their favorite game, but over time they would become increasingly frustrated with her for sure. Anyway, I don't know if I'm ever gonna write that scene, but I do have others planned that will showcase their relationship well enough. I could definitely see her having a special soft spot for Will. I think his passion for D&D would remind her of Eddie. Plus she would be intrigued by his artistic abilities and would commission him for random drawings of her and Eddie's D&D characters.

4. Yes, the similar openings for chapters one and nine were completely intentional. 😊 The initial plan was to have nine and ten be one chapter, so the final chapter would mirror the first chapter. It ended up being way too long, though, so I split it into two chapters. It kinda ruined the effect, but oh well. 🤷🏻‍♀️

5. Evelyn's family will definitely be in future updates. Her family is extremely important to her, so they're not going anywhere. 😉

And I'm not gonna lie, I'm completely Team Vic here. I love their relationship and I think he and Evelyn would be absolutely adorable together. HOWEVER, personal feelings aside, the reason Victor isn't listed as an official pairing is because, compared to the other two pairings, you're not gonna see much romance between Vic and Evelyn. At this point, Evelyn has already moved on. She's painfully, hopelessly, and foolishly in love with someone else. Vic knows this. He doesn't like it, but he respects it, and right now all he cares about is righting his wrongs and salvaging their friendship.

Whew, that was a lot, but it was really fun! Thank you for taking the time to write all these awesome questions. Hopefully I answered them well enough ❤️

[sebastianshaw]

How Shaw became the Rock's archenemy

There's this tidbit about a guy I wanted to share with you because it sounds like something Shaw would do on purpose:

For context, the guy's name is Sébastien so clearly, there are things in this life that were simply meant to be. He is a French Youtuber going by "Seb la Frite" translated as "Seb the fry" (pretty descriptive of his physique) and a big fan of the Rock, the former US professional wrestler. This part will become really relevant to our story.

It all started in 2016 when he gets invited by YouTube to LA for some filming project. It's filled with people from all across the globe. Each were representing their country and in his case, it was France (he left us with quite the rep I tell you). Some dude then comes to him to ask if he'd like to play a part in a Dwayne Johnson podcast and Seb accepts.

Now, our guy didn't know what he was getting himself into cuz 1) his English sucks and 2) he doesn't know the Rock's real name. So as far he was aware of, he just got invited to some rando's skit.

He gets on the set of "The Seance in Room 301 with the Rock & his YouTube Friends" and basically messes the very simple "Repeat the sentence" exercice he was given in every way, shape or form to the point where he was cut from the final product... Except for one part.

See, they have this sequence where you have to reveal a secret in your native language. Our guy, disgusted by his own incompetence and thinking he was gonna get completely cut from the montage anyways, decided to pull a ballsy prank.

Cuz Seb is, what we could call, a little shit.

When his turn comes, he says with a blank expression in French "So in my case, I love to be shat on. Like right in the face." (Timecode 1:39 - 1:45) as a bunch of non French speakers nod in support. 

And they left it in the final product. Which is still on the Rock's official channel.

After the massive trolling he pulled, Seb went for the appetizers before getting stopped by YET ANOTHER guy for the Rock's QnA and YET AGAIN he accepts to participate. The issue is that he still doesn't know who Dwayne Johnson is.

Our protagonist, finally deciding to out himself as the elephant in the room, says "I'm just here for the food. I'm French and I don't know you" before going straight for the chips. 

They revealed everything to him then but the damage was already done. 

When his "question" finally reached the Rock, because of course it did, Dwayne looked at the camera and said "If I ever see you in the street, I'm gonna take you, and your French accent, and your little banana chips and fuck you up." with a huge smile on his face, followed by a "I'm only serious".

And since that day... Seb has been training so that when they finally see one another...

He'd tell him he's more of a vinegar chips kind of guy.

In all seriousness, Seb says that if he did know who Dwayne was from the very beginning,

He would've punched him first cuz he doesn't fuck around. 

Because Sébastien and Sebastian might be separed by the medium, the Atlantic, the French roots and the muscle mass but they are both on equal levels of being little shits. 

[kent-ridge]

Is Japanese internet slang full of fish? - My washed-up linguistic theory.

A couple of weeks ago I was looking at a glossary of Final Fantasy 14 Japanese internet slang a friend had sent me, and I was struck by an idea: Japanese has a really wide lexicon of fish and fishing related words. Does Japanese internet slang also have more fish related words than English internet slang does? The idea made me laugh, and that was enough to want to try to pursue it. 

The Japanese lexicon does, in fact, have a very extensive vocabulary related to fish and fishing. Masayoshi Shibatani (1990) wrote, ‘The vocabulary of a language reflects the cultural and socio-economic concerns of its speakers, and the Japanese lexicon is no exception to this truism.’ He explains that fishing was one of the primary socio-economic activities in traditional Japanese society, and therefore the native Japanese vocabulary has a great number of words and expressions relating to fish. Of course, we have a fairly wide fishing vocabulary in English as well, but Japanese goes into further detail. Shibatani gives examples of 9 different Japanese words for a fish that we would refer to simply as ‘yellowtail’ in all cases in English - in Japanese there are different words for it depending on its size.

Another wonderful piece of evidence of the abundance of fish words in Japanese is a 1940s ‘Glossary of Japanese Fisheries Terms’ that I found on the American National Marine Fisheries Service Scientific Publications Office website. In March 1947, J. A. Krug, Secretary of the United States Department of the Interior and Albert M. Day, Director of the Fish and Wildlife service, published a leaflet titled, ‘Glossary of Japanese Fisheries Terms.’ It is a dictionary of fishing terms and names of fish, including both Japanese to English and English to Japanese translations. 

The introduction reads, ‘Fish and fishing play such an important role in Japanese life that an extensive and complicated fisheries vocabulary has evolved. Each of the hundreds of kinds of fish, shellfish, and seaweed has several vernacular names, the wide assortment of prepared seafood adds many more words; and the variety of fishing gear has a large specialized nomenclature.’ Clearly, the vocabulary related to fishing in Japan was so specific that it didn’t do well enough simply to translate it to the closest English word - a specialised glossary was needed so that American fishermen could understand precisely what the Japanese fishermen were referring to. (If you, like me, are quite enamoured by historical, niche glossaries or dictionaries, you can read the Glossary of Japanese Fisheries Terms here.)

With this evidence that Japanese does have more words to do with fish and fishing than English does, I wondered if perhaps the extensive fish-related lexicon in Japanese affected the creation of slang terms, particularly internet slang terms. While there is no definitive corpus or complete dictionary of Japanese internet slang, several fish-related phrases came to mind. For example, 雑魚 zako, literally meaning ‘small fish’ is a commonly used phrase in casual Japanese which means ‘a wimp’ or an ‘unimportant person.’ This is also used in MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, e.g. Final Fantasy 14) lingo to mean ‘low-level NPC (Non Player Character) enemies.’ Of course, we have the word ‘small fry’ in English which has essentially the same meaning of ‘unimportant person’, but we do not use it in the same context in online gaming. (I have been informed that in English we might call these weak enemies ‘trash mob’ or ‘slimes’ - a reference to the slime blob enemies in the game Dragon Quest.) I also recalled that 鯖 saba - ‘mackerel’ is slang for the word ‘server’ - a lovely wordplay on the loanword sābā.

I then asked on twitter if anyone could help me to come up with some more Japanese fish-related internet words. I had a few interesting replies, suggesting 釣り tsuri (fishing) which means ‘trolling’, accompanied with 釣り師 tsurishi (angler) for ‘troll’, and エサ esa (bait) and 釣り針 tsuribari (fishhook) , which both refer to the content used by a troll to entice other users into replying angrily. Although we might also call this practice ‘baiting’ in English, and we of course have the famous term ‘clickbait’ for baiting people into clicking a link, the metaphor is further expanded upon in Japanese internet language. When a troll gets the responses they were hoping for, other net users may say something like ‘大漁だな’ tairyou da na - ‘That’s a big haul.’ 

I was also told about ウェブ魚拓 webu gyotaku (web fish printing), which is a method of preserving the content of a website in a snapshot, like the service Wayback Machine. Gyotaku is the traditional Japanese practice of dipping a fish in ink to create a print, which could record a fisherman's catch they are particularly proud of, or simply make a nice picture of a fish. (Incidentally, the web address for the website where one can access webu gyotaku is ‘megalodon.jp.')

This is not an incredibly extensive list, but I was pleasantly surprised with the number of responses I received. I also tried to come up with a list of fish-related English internet terms, but all I could think of was ‘phishing’, ‘clickbait’, and ‘catfish.’ None of these are slang as such, but created terms for phenomena that only happen online. (They respectively mean, ‘sending scam emails’, ‘using sensationalised or misleading content to entice users to click on something’, and ‘pretending to be someone else on online dating sites.’) I suppose at a stretch I could actually include ‘the net’ into my list of fishing-related internet vocabulary.

I don’t, however, think that this is enough evidence to suggest that Japanese internet slang does indeed have a larger proportion of fish or fishing-related terms than internet slang in other languages. Furthermore, even if it did, it does not necessarily prove that it is because of the wide fish lexicon that Japanese has in general.

I think my next step would have to be to explore whether other aspects of the Japanese lexicon are reflected in the creation of internet slang terms. Shibatani also mentions that Japanese has an abundance of words to do with nature, but not many body part words. (Even a novice Japanese learner will have noticed that ‘foot’ and ‘leg’ are both expressed with one word, 足 ashi, and that both ‘smile’ and ‘laugh’ are expressed with the verb 笑う warau.) 

The problem is, it is fairly difficult to linguistically analyse ‘Japanese internet slang’ as a concept, and to compare it to ‘English internet slang.’ There is no official online corpus of internet slang in English or Japanese, and it changes every day as new slang terms are created and older terms fall out of practice. The only way I can see to continue this research is to compile my own lists, either from spotting slang terms ‘in the wild’ online, or asking strangers on twitter to come up with any terms they can think of. 

Even if I could prove that the tendencies of the Japanese vocabulary are reflected in its internet slang, what would this actually demonstrate? That, somehow, the balance of this lexicon is engrained in Japanese minds and so it affects the creation of new slang terms and wordplay? Or just that there are a lot of fish words so people create fish-related associations? 

What kind of words are there more of in English than in other languages? Have we English-speakers developed a tendency to create internet slang based on… growing wheat… or… brewing… or whatever is that was traditionally engrained into English society, and therefore probably English vocabulary? Somehow, I don’t think so.

So, I was unable to come to a satisfying conclusion about my theory of fish-heavy Japanese internet slang. But I don’t think it was a complete waste of my time. It was my first foray into researching something just because I was curious and felt like it, and even though it didn’t lead me to any groundbreaking discoveries about the creation of new slang terms in Japanese, I had a lot of fun. It sparked some interesting conversations with friends and twitter strangers, and I got to read a 1940s fish dictionary. Some pretty good mental stimulation for a Wednesday afternoon in lockdown.

[justholdinghandsok]

I think you're reading the Orlando interview wrong. The way I read it, as a native English speaker, is that the fandom thinks the ship is sinking bc David and Gillian are not together for some reason. That's why he said "so they think." Like we are the ones that think that. I actually found the interview to be a slight confirmation. I guess I may be the only one.

I don’t think I read it wrong. “So they think” wasn’t for the fandom, but for David and Gillian who, according to him, think they’ll never be together. It doesn’t make much sense if he was talking about the fandom. 

But in both cases, it’s just massive trolling from our Captain!

[gibsongirlselections]

China Leaves Russian Meddling in the Dust

At least Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and their surrogates in the Mainstream Media got one point right regarding foreign interference in U.S. politics: that it is totally bogus to compare the records of Russia and China in election meddling and in other aspects of American public life, and their abilities to do so.

Trouble is, the House Speaker, the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, and other Never Trumpers are wildly off-base about who the main culprit has been and will be for years to come. It’s not Russia, it’s China— and by orders of magnitude. 

In fact, on top of efforts to shape voters’ opinions during election campaigns, Beijing for decades has been influencing American politics in ways Moscow can barely dream of.

Commenting on the spotlight that U.S. intelligence officials have placed on both countries’ interference efforts (along with Iran’s), Pelosi and Schiff declared that the analysis “provided a false sense of equivalence to the actions of foreign adversaries by listing three countries of unequal operational intent, actions, and capabilities together.” 

In particular, they charged, the actions of Kremlin-linked actors seeking to undermine Vice President Biden, and seeking to help President Trump” were glossed over.

Pelosi stated subsequently, “The Chinese, they said, prefer (presumptive Democratic nominee Joe) Biden—we don’t know that, but that’s what they’re saying, but they’re not really getting involved in the presidential election.” 

The liberal media, as is so often the case, echoed this Democratic talking point. According to The New York Times‘ Robert Draper, author of a long piece in the paper’s magazine section on Trump’s supposed refusal to approve anti-Russia interference measures or take seriously such findings by the intelligence community, China “is really not able to affect the integrity of our electoral system the way Russia can.”

What these Trump opponents have completely overlooked is that the Chinese are unquestionably meddling—though with some distinctive Chinese characteristics. And much more importantly, China has long been interfering in American political activities by capitalizing on the degree to which so many major American institutions have become beholden to the Chinese government through pre-Trump “bilateral ties.”

As for the narrower, more direct kind of election corrupting, you don’t need to take the word of President Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien that “China, like Russia and Iran, have engaged in cyberattacks and fishing and that sort of thing with respect to our election infrastructure and with respect to websites.”

You don’t have to take the word of Vice President Mike Pence, who in 2018 cited a national intelligence assessment that found that China “is targeting U.S. state and local governments and officials to exploit any divisions between federal and local levels on policy. It’s using wedge issues, like trade tariffs, to advance Beijing’s political influence.”

You can ignore Pence’s contention that that same year, a document circulated by Beijing stated that China must [quoting directly] “strike accurately and carefully, splitting apart different domestic groups” in the United States.

Nor do you need to take seriously the intelligence community judgement dismissed by Pelosi and Schiff that:

“China has been expanding its influence efforts ahead of November 2020 to shape the policy environment in the United States, pressure political figures it views as opposed to China’s interests, and deflect and counter criticism of China….Beijing recognizes that all of these efforts might affect the presidential race.”

Much harder to ignore: China’s decision at the height of the 2018 Congressional election campaigns to take out a four-page supplement in the Sunday Des Moines [Iowa] Register that clearly was “intended to undermine farm-country support for President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war.”

The New York Times itself reported that this past spring that U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that as the coronavirus pandemic was peaking in the nation, Chinese operatives were responsible for sending throughout social media scary sounding warnings that President Trump was about to lock down the entire country—complete with prepositioning  troops “to help prevent looters and rioters.”

At least as worrisome: A new report from the information analysis firm Graphika documenting how, “Social media accounts from the pro-Chinese political spam network Spamouflage Dragon started posting English-language videos that attacked American policy and the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump in June, as the rhetorical confrontation between the United States and China escalated.”

According to Graphika, such disinformation campaigns had begun in mid-2019, but were waged in Chinese and aimed at Chinese audiences. This new phase, however, targeted at the United States, represented “a clear expansion of its scope” and even featured “clusters of accounts with AI-generated profile pictures” to convey the impression that those sending these materials were actual human beings.

Also alleging that Chinese agents are increasingly active on major social media platforms—a study from research institute Freedom House, which reported that:

“[C]hinese state-affiliated trolls are…apparently operating on [Twitter] in large numbers. In the hours and days after Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted in support of Hong Kong protesters in October 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported, nearly 170,000 tweets were directed at Morey by users who seemed to be based in China as part of a coordinated intimidation campaign. Meanwhile, there have been multiple suspected efforts by pro-Beijing trolls to manipulate the ranking of content on popular sources of information outside China, including Google’s search engine Reddit,and YouTube.”

Last year, a major Hoover Institution report issued especially disturbing findings about Beijing’s efforts to influence the views (and therefore the votes) of Chinese Americans, including exploiting the potential hostage status of their relatives in China. According to the Hoover researchers:

“Among the Chinese American community, China has long sought to influence—even silence—voices critical of the PRC or supportive of Taiwan by dispatching personnel to the United States to pressure these individuals and while also pressuring their relatives in China. Beijing also views Chinese Americans as members of a worldwide Chinese diaspora that presumes them to retain not only an interest in the welfare of China but also a loosely defined cultural, and even political, allegiance to the so-called Motherland.”

In addition: “In the American media, China has all but eliminated the plethora of independent Chinese-language media outlets that once served Chinese American communities. It has co-opted existing Chinese language outlets and established its own new outlets.”

Operations aimed at Chinese Americans are anything but trivial politically. As of 2018, they represented nearly 2.6 million eligible U.S. voters, and they belonged to an Asian-American super-category that reflects the fastest growing racial and ethnic population of eligible voters in the country.

Most live in heavily Democratic states, like California, New York, and Massachusetts, but significant concentrations are also found in the battleground states where many of the 2016 presidential election margins were razor thin, and many of which look up for grabs this year, like Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

More broadly, according to the Hoover study:

“In American federal and state politics, China seeks to identify and cultivate rising politicians. Like many other countries, Chinese entities employ prominent lobbying and public relations firms and cooperate with influential civil society groups. These activities complement China’s long-standing support of visits to China by members of Congress and their staffs. In some rare instances Beijing has used private citizens and companies to exploit loopholes in US regulations that prohibit direct foreign contributions to elections.”

But even more thoroughly overlooked than these narrower forms of Chinese political interference is a broader, much more dangerous type of Chinese meddling that leaves Moscow’s efforts in the dust. For example, U.S.-owned multinational companies, which have long profited at the expense of the domestic economy by offshoring production and jobs to China, have just as long carried Beijing’s water in American politics through their massive contributions to U.S. political campaigns. The same goes for Wall Street, which hasn’t sent many U.S. operations overseas, but which has long hungered for permission to do more business in the Chinese market.

These same big businesses continually and surreptitiously inject their views into American political debates by heavily financing leading think tanks —which garb their special interest agendas in the raiment of objective scholarship.

Hollywood and the rest of the U.S. entertainment industry has become so determined to brown nose China in search of profits that it’s made nearly routine rewriting and censoring material deemed offensive to China. In case you haven’t noticed, show biz figures haven’t exactly been reluctant to weigh in on U.S. political issues lately. And yes, these entertainment figures include stars and leading coaches of the National Basketball Association, who have taken a leading role in what’s become known as the Black Lives Matter movement, but who have remained conspicuously silent about the lives of inhabitants of the vast China market that’s one of their biggest and most promising cash cows.

Moreover, the gap between this indirect Chinese involvement in American politics and Russian election interference is not only yawning. It shows no signs of closing. As a result, China’s overall advantage is so great that it makes a case for a useful rule-of-thumb: Whenever you find out about someone complaining about Russia’s election interference but brushing off China’s, you can be sure that they’re not really angry about interference as such. They’re just angry about interference they don’t like.

Alan Tonelson is the founder of RealityChek, a public policy blog focusing on economics and national security, and the author of The Race to the Bottom.

The post China Leaves Russian Meddling in the Dust appeared first on The American Conservative.