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Apple Talk / Re: Not Crazy
« Last post by axod on Yesterday at 09:02:10 am »Yeah, there is an element of scariness and discomfort to the whole thing, for sure.:newsfeed:
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Apple Talk / Re: On Language
« Last post by Pergamos on Yesterday at 06:13:25 am »
Alfred Bloom’s book “The Linguistic Shaping of Thought” tried another experiment - he gave Chinese and American students a passage to read, then tested them on it. The passage relied heavily on the subjunctive-clause, which is absent in Chinese. On followup tests, American students got 98% right, Chinese students got only 7% right. Bloom concluded that the Chinese language renders its speakers unable to entertain hypothetical false worlds without great mental effort. A cavalry of cognitive scientists disagreed with these tales of the concreteness of the Oriental mind. They pointed out numerous problems in the experiments, like that the Chinese translations of the passage were really bad, and at times genuinely ambiguous. When these flaws were fixed in subsequent experiments, the differences vanished.
This seems like an obviously flawed experiment. "lets see how these students do at understanding something absent in their language, and use their language to test that" um, obviously it isn't going to work.
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Literate Chaotic / Re: ITT: Original Story Ideas
« Last post by Prelate Diogenes Shandor on Yesterday at 04:01:16 am »Knight Rider reimagined as modern sci-fi noir. Michael Knight is now a brilliant but habitually drunk P.I., and this very drunkenness is why he synergizes so well with the world's most advanced self driving car. KITT drives itself and thus won;t be crashed by a drunk driver, and since KITT is more heavily armored than most military vehicles he can also hide from his bookie when his gambling debts are in arrears and kneecaps are about to be broken.
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Aneristic Illusions / Re: UK General Election 8th June: Shake it all about?
« Last post by nullified on December 08, 2018, 07:59:49 pm »Oh, I don’t know if it’s necessarily too strong a word. Sure, the deaths weren’t specifically intended by the UK, which would legally absolve them of genocide, but it’s harder to say they didn’t see it happening or that they did anything to help if they did notice. Morally speaking I feel like that’s not too far removed from a purposeful attempt to starve the Irish out of existence.
And yeah, even if you disagree with my stance on the matter, saying that shit the way she did causes some pretty hefty fury in the hearts of anyone who knows a damn thing about it and has a caring bone in their body. Hyperbole happens in such moments.
And yeah, even if you disagree with my stance on the matter, saying that shit the way she did causes some pretty hefty fury in the hearts of anyone who knows a damn thing about it and has a caring bone in their body. Hyperbole happens in such moments.
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Aneristic Illusions / Re: UK General Election 8th June: Shake it all about?
« Last post by Faust on December 08, 2018, 07:53:07 pm »I wasn’t entirely sure if I was misremembering the potato famine being essentially genocide... guess I wasn’t.Its a common belief that the one million people who died was entirely due to the potato blight, during the same period farmers were forced at gunpoint to export their crops. It's hard to say how many lives could have been saved if they had been able to use the food themselves, but they are deaths that could have been avoided.
Genocide is too strong a word for it, but there is a responsibility on the UK for many of those deaths.
https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/was-the-famine-genocide-by-the-british-28954929.html
It's not even a thing people talk about other than die hard shinner nationalists, but its those kind of feelings Patel's tone deaf comments illicit.
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Aneristic Illusions / Re: UK General Election 8th June: Shake it all about?
« Last post by nullified on December 08, 2018, 07:32:36 pm »I’m glad that my initial reaction was validated by an actual Irish citizen. I wasn’t entirely sure if I was misremembering the potato famine being essentially genocide... guess I wasn’t.
I’m upgrading from frozen peas to large ball bearings covered in barbed wire and capsaicin. Fuck these shitbag goons.
I’m upgrading from frozen peas to large ball bearings covered in barbed wire and capsaicin. Fuck these shitbag goons.
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Aneristic Illusions / Re: UK General Election 8th June: Shake it all about?
« Last post by Faust on December 08, 2018, 06:02:10 pm »It's either ignorance of her history and the role Britain played in the Irish famine, or a deliberate sneering comment about what was effectively a genocide.
She is correct that if the UK has food shortages we will too (banana's oranges, and imported foods) come on frieight from the UK.
But what makes her comment even funnier are two things:
1) The UK imports 50% of it's food, guess where most of that comes from.
2) https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-food-security/
The second is, fuck her, she is putting me in a position where I am given to my baser instinct of reveling at the thought of food shortages in the UK out of spite, which is unfair to the millions of people are aren't fucking monsters like her.
She is correct that if the UK has food shortages we will too (banana's oranges, and imported foods) come on frieight from the UK.
But what makes her comment even funnier are two things:
1) The UK imports 50% of it's food, guess where most of that comes from.
2) https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-food-security/
The second is, fuck her, she is putting me in a position where I am given to my baser instinct of reveling at the thought of food shortages in the UK out of spite, which is unfair to the millions of people are aren't fucking monsters like her.
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Aneristic Illusions / Re: General Trump hilarity free-for-all thread
« Last post by Cain on December 08, 2018, 04:12:35 pm »Yup. Elijah Cunningham passed on some highly relevant reservations about Flynn to Pence, in a letter, which Pence then lied about.
Worth noting, since it's always missed in these discussions, that Flynn not only had suspicious contacts with the Russian government, but also with the Turkish government who had hired his consulting firm, Flynn Associates, to provide information on Turkish opposition figures in the US and in one case, to figure out a plan to illegally rendition one back to Turkey. At the very least Pence's vetting should have picked up on the Turkish government contracts.
Worth noting, since it's always missed in these discussions, that Flynn not only had suspicious contacts with the Russian government, but also with the Turkish government who had hired his consulting firm, Flynn Associates, to provide information on Turkish opposition figures in the US and in one case, to figure out a plan to illegally rendition one back to Turkey. At the very least Pence's vetting should have picked up on the Turkish government contracts.
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Aneristic Illusions / Re: General Trump hilarity free-for-all thread
« Last post by Bu☆ns on December 08, 2018, 03:13:39 pm »Not sure how good The source was but yesterday I read an article (that I can't find right now) that mentioned how the transition team was largely involved with Russian correspondence. And it went on to remind the reader that the head of the Trump transition team was Mike pence. So this means that should pence also get indicted (possibly in some of those heavily redacted paragraphs) the next person in line of succession would be the new speaker of the House. This new speaker of the House based on the Democratic majority is likely to be Nancy pelosi.