#why do i have to use american words

[yellowbeaniegirl]

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The trees outside my office window are slowly turning yellow and the very tips of them are orange - and I think a little red. They're giving me real cozy and autumn-y feels.

So here's a little pumpkin I painted during my Oiltober challenge a few years ago.

I'm thinking of doing Oiltober again this year. I didn't get a chance to do it last year as I moved in with my partner and honestly, I wasn't fully unpacked until November.

I will likely be streaming a few bits of Oiltober 2024 over on Twitch I say.

[onpie]

Noodles and Tea’s work inspired me fr

[saym0-0]

so the mechs totally speak a pidgin language of all their native languages right. we can agree on this right. their accents are a horrific mashup of all their original ones too, to the point where every single word they say sounds heavily accented to a native speaker of the language that word came from, even if its the mech that was originally a native speaker of that language. does this make sense at all?? they're just a linguistic mess i think they deserve it

[torahtot]

ok ive had enough of queering judaism. can we start judaizing queerness now. or something

[adamsvanrhijn]

i truly do not know why people feel so strongly about "american" as a multi continent demonym when communicating in english.... like if you want to specify us-american because american as a demonym should apply to everyone from all continents you can and you're not hurting anybody but like. it is literally derived from the name of an Italian colonizer why is this the hill you want to die on

[stellacadente]

actually confuses me how so many nonblack people want to make it seem like it's hard or something to not use aave bc it's literally so easy? you just have to not say words. and you can start any time. you didn't know a word or phrase is aave? now you know, don't say it anymore. it already happens anyway bc we bastardize aave so much, overuse one word or phrase that belongs to black people for a few months or something until it's not "trendy" anymore and then it's cringe to say it, so nonblack people stop saying it. what we can and should do instead is every single time we learn something is aave (and if you know/follow black americans you will hear about it!! just pay attention and stop only listening to white people!!) we immediately stop saying it and i guarantee you it won't take you long at all to start recognizing aave without having black people holding your hand through it. literally just listen and learn and then you'll be more and more used to recognizing aave and its appropriation and it'll be so incredibly simple to just not appropriate it even unknowingly

[mushed-kid]

not to get political but i keep seeing clips from a usa presidental debate and holy sht u guys😭😭😭 what are you dooinngnggg that is literally insane to watch there is no way its actually like i wow i cant even form a sentence like. the debating is so… how on earth is it possible that people are voting trump? like genuinely, and i dont even know a lot about either party or candidate but just the fact that hes saying so many things that gets fact checked and proven wrong during one debate is crazy. how can anyone trust anything he says like he just proved that he’ll say anything no matter how stupid. multiple things during one debate. how did it ever get to the point where people become like that how do people see the debates and the speeches and whatnot and still somehow plan to vote trump. he just says things. how is he even allowed to run still??? ive never seen this man make a good point ever. actually i dont think ive ever seen him even just make a point. he just talks, mostly in the form of facial expressions and hand movements.

howwwwww is he gonna be president when he cant even have a debate? i wouldnt let him cut my grass if he paid me, with the way he’s showing lower ..ability to …think😭 he always seems like hes debating like he’s imitating a conversation except hes never ever heard one. the way he ‘debates’ sounds like if i would be drunkingly trying to convince someone that im black and theyre just blind. it doesnt make any sense. they fact check him and hes just straight up wrong, the whole thing seemed like a bad improv scene or an ironic idfk the simpsons episode about being gullible. it is insane to watch and i dont get how he gets away with it. you guys need to vote

[the-eclectic-wonderer]

Sophia is very specifically Sicilian and a rural village girl so it's actually logical she would struggle to understand some Standard Italian! Sicilian is its own language and Sicilian Italian is its own regional dialect. I'm 95% the writers weren't thinking of this but it actually makes sense.

Anon, you anticipated me! That’s exactly my hypothesis on why Sophia doesn’t speak proper Italian. In some parts of Italy (especially in the South, or in rural regions) people still speak their dialect before they speak Italian, and prefer their local dialect to Italian in their everyday life. Nowadays everyone learns proper Italian in school, but especially back when Sophia lived in Sicily, she definitely would have spoken in her local dialect only!

Interestingly enough, though, most of the “Italian” expressions she uses aren’t actually Italian nor Sicilian in origin (or, when they are, they’re used incorrectly — see using the word abbondanza as an insult). I think this is where her status as an immigrant comes into play: I have to suppose those words and expressions are part of the (Brooklyn) Italian-American vernacular, and considering she’s been speaking that vernacular for most of her life, it’s not surprising that she defaults to it. I’m afraid I don’t know enough about Italian-American slang to properly verify that, though!

[bibleofficial]

went to the beach w kp & 4 other indian friends & 3 of us had NEVER surfed before girl WHEW it’s SO fun literally only 20quid to rent a wetsuit & board & i fucking smashed my toes on the sand so much, but also we 1) got the wrong tickets so we got off 1 stop early 2) went to find a bus & the bus that was supposed to be 15 min turned into an HOUR 3) on our way to find a bus back everyone’s phones are dying or dead bc it took us 3hrs longer to get there, cigarettes are out 4) all of the shops in town are closed & the town seems to have ONLY a tesco extra & 1 off license that sells a PACK FOR 15.65 A PACK WHICH IS FUCKING CRIMINAL ITS CHEAPER TO BUY IT FROM TESCO ARE U INSANE 5) the bus back to the other town kept skipping us bc the bus stop wasn’t the ACTUAL bus stop - i had 1 bowl since literally 11a & we got back at fucking 11p 😭😭😭

[marisatomay]

Interested to know whyd you give The Menu 1 star on letterboxd !!

i didn’t like it

[echotunes]

on my hands and knees trying to figure out how the word usted works

[cursedwerewolf]

end of the semester is definitely the worst time to decide you don't give a single flying fuck about your major

[wannabe-all]

God I can't believe this. Carnival is approaching here and of course kids dress up in costumes, guess what costume have the teachers picked this year. AFRICAN TRIBES. LIKE DUDE WHAT THE FUCK YOU PIECE OF SHIT, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!?!?! Oh, and that's not the worst part, THEY ARE GOING TO MAKE THEM DANCE AND SING. Dance and sing african songs (I don't know which, I don't even know what tribe they want to use as a base but hell no) I can't believe it, well I can but it's still indignant. I am not black nor come from a tribe but I'm an immigrant in this country and I have faced my own little struggles regarding my cultural background and identity (obviously I can't compare with what POC have to face, this isn't about me) honestly if my culture was butchered and used like a costume I'd commit manslaughter

I just want this to be used as a reminder that culture, that traditional clothes from other places and cultures, that traditional dances and songs are NOT A COSTUME, THEY ARE NOT FOR FUN OR TO WEAR TO ONE EVENT AND EVEN LESS TO MOCK THEM.

People from all cultural backgrounds and races are more than invited to comment and state what they think (go ahead please). Make your own posts and revindicate this.

Carnival is coming

[sirfrogsworth]

How do you take a photo of time?

I've been watching the track events at the Olympics since I was a wee lad. It was a tradition in our family. We'd gather around our ancient low-definition 19 inch CRT television and watch tiny blobs compete against other tiny blobs and root for our country.

It was a bit like watching YouTube on your phone in 144p.

Several heroes emerged.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee was amazing.

You can't forget about Flo-Jo.

And then the Olympics decided NBA players were allowed in the competition.

Which formed... The Dream Team.

Was this fair?

Well... they won each game by an average of 44 points.

So... no. It was not fair.

Though it became more fair as time went on.

But, umm... yeah. The other teams looked like the Washington Generals and the US looked like the Harlem Globetrotters if they stopped screwing around half of the game.

But my absolute favorite Olympian was a runner named Michael Johnson.

He was cool as heck.

For one thing... gold shoes.

But he also had this crazy, upright, Tom Cruise-ish sprinting style that just made him look like a running robot on the track.

And in the 1996 Atlanta games he just trounced EVERYONE. I mean, it wasn't even close.

Yikes. Those losing blobs are probably really embarrassed.

Last night I decided to invigorate my nostalgia and watch the track events again. And I got to see one of the wildest races in history.

It didn't even last 10 seconds but it was one of the most exciting sporting events I've ever witnessed. Almost every runner won the race.

After I saw that initially, I was like... who the heck won???

Even in slow motion I wasn't sure.

This was one of the closest finishes in history. There has never been a race where all 8 runners were within this margin.

The arena was silent as the winner was being confirmed. The runners just kind of paced around waiting for official word. My best guess was the Jamaican runner, Kishane Thompson. But then the loudspeaker announced Noah Lyles.

The last tiny morsel of American pride burst out of me with a big "Wooooo!"

I forgot what it was like to be proud of my country. I wish it happened more often. But this young man, despite being last place in the first 3rd of the race, turned on the afterburners and won in a photo finish.

And that's when my inner nerd took over.

Because when they showed the photo finish image, it looked super weird.

Why is the track white?

Why do all of the runners look all warpy like that QWOP game?

So I went down a research rabbit hole to figure this out.

Photo finishes are actually fascinating. The first photo finish captured the end of a horse race in 1890. But that was mostly luck and timing. The actual photo finish mechanisms weren't used until 1937.

Originally they would film the finish line through a physical slit.

And the first horsie head that appeared in that slit would be the winner. This technology ended a huge aspect of corruption in horse race fixing almost overnight.

But we have come a long way since then. And I'd like to introduce you to the Omega Scan 'O' Vision Ultimate.

This slow motion camera sits fixed on the finish line of every race. The concept of the photo finish has remained remarkably similar to the 1930s approach. The camera sensor is specially designed to only record a vertical slit.

Only the finish line itself is actually captured.

And because it limits what it records to only that slit, it can capture 40,000 frames per second to get amazing temporal resolution.

So why don't the photo finishes just look like, well... this?

That is because the camera takes a picture of time more-so than dimensional space. I guess it would be more accurate to say it *assembles* a picture of time.

As the runners cross the finish line, the camera combines all of the little strips of pictures into a single image.

It's almost like if you tried to reassemble a piece of paper after it had been shredded.

Imagine each strip of paper is a picture of ONLY the finish line, just at a slightly different point in time.

What if someone stopped on the finish line and didn't move... what would that look like?

Once they got there, the same part of their body would just be repeated.

So the right side of the photo finish picture represents earlier in time and it just assembles the image strip by strip as time passes and you literally get a picture of time itself.

NEAT!

Okay, but how do they determine the winner from the photo finish?

I mean, that shoe looks like it is ahead of Noah Lyles!

Clavicles!

The IAFF rules state the foremost part of the torso must cross the finish line first. And the endpoint of the torso is the outer end of the clavicle.

So if you get this bone across the finish line first, you win the race.

Two more fun facts!

The start of the race is actually just as carefully timed as the end of the race. There are sensors in the starting blocks of each runner.

The starting gun also has an electronic sensor.

They have determined the fastest a human can react to the sound of a gun is roughly 100 milliseconds. So if you start running before 100 milliseconds they know you didn't actually hear the gun, you just got antsy and started running too early.

And the final fun fact...

Did you notice the Omega logo at the top of the photo finish?

That isn't superimposed or added after the fact. That is captured by the camera.

But if this image is composed only of tiny little slivers, how did they get the Omega logo to show up?

That is a little display. And it is synchronized with the Scan 'O' Vision Ultimate to show a little sliver of the Omega logo for each frame captured.

So when the final image is stitched together, it looks like a cohesive logo at the top of the photo.

Pretty clever, Omega!

[playingonedchess]

like i tend to hate every fandom cause its always annoying some way or other but theres actually so much i literally bloody despise about the ace attorney fandom and all that random fanon they made up without even realising it has absolutely nothing to do with the games. it isnt even good fanon if that could even exist most of it is total utter rubbish

[visenyaism]

do you have any ideas about why so many students are struggling with literacy now? I know that illiteracy and reading comprehension have been issues for years and most americans read at like a 5th grade reading level but I’m curious why it seems to be worse now (pandemic? no child left behind?)

It is everything. There’s not one answer. I could talk about this forever so instead I set a five minute timer on my phone and wrote a list of as many of the many things that are causing this on a systemic level that I could think of:

It’s parents not reading with their kids (a privilege, but some parents have that privilege to be able to do this and don’t.)

It’s youtube from birth and never being bored.

It’s phasing out phonics for sight words (memorizing without understanding sounds or meaning) in elementary schools in the early aughts.

It’s defunding public libraries that do all the community and youth outreach.

It’s NCLB and mandating standardized tests which center reading short passages as opposed to longform texts so students don’t build up the endurance or comprehension skills.

It’s NCLB preventing schools from holding students back if they lack the literacy skills to move onto the next grade because they can’t be left behind so they’re passed on.

It’s the chronic underfunding of ESL and Special Ed programs for students who need extra literacy support.

It’s the cultural devaluing of the humanities in favor of stem and business because those make more money which leads to a lot of students to completely disregard reading and writing.

It’s the learning loss from covid.

It’s covid trauma manifesting in a lot of students as learned helplessness, or an inability to “figure things out” or push through adversity to complete challenging tasks independently, especially reading difficult texts.

It’s covid normalizing cheating and copying.

It’s increasing phone use.

It’s damage to attention span exacerbated by increased phone use that leaves you without an ability to sit and be bored ever without 2-3 forms of constant stimulation.

It’s shortform video becoming the predominant form of social media content as opposed to anything text-based.

It’s starting to also be generative AI.

It’s the book bans.

what did I miss.