lvxferre

@lvxferre@mander.xyz

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon on Mussolini⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Merdolini & friends hanging together
  ______________________
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  |º\⟨º⟩⟨º\  ⟨º⟩ |º|
  

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Color? What's that?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Backstory of the spelling of that word:

  Latin colōrem (accusative of color) gets inherited by Old French as color /ko’lor/.

  Somewhere down the line Old French shifted /o/ to /u/. I believe this shift affected at first stressed vowels, or that the distinction between unstressed /o/ and /u/ was already not a big deal; so there was more pressure to respell the last (stressed) vowel than the first (unstressed) one. So the word gets spelled color, colour, colur.

  Anglo-Norman inherited this mess, spelling it mostly as colur. Then Middle English borrows the word, as /ku.'lu:r/~/'ku.lur/. It’s oxytone in AN, but English has a tendency to shift the stress to the first vowel, creating the second pronunciation. Spelling as usual for those times is a mess:

  • colur - spelled like in Anglo-Norman.
  • color - swap the ⟨u⟩ with cosmetic ⟨o⟩. Scribes hated spelling ⟨u⟩ in certain situations, where it would lead to too many vertical lines in a row; that’s why you also got come, love, people instead of cume, luve, peuple.
  • colour - mirroring an Old French spelling that was more common up south, around Paris.
  • coloure - that ⟨e⟩ was likely never pronounced, I think it was there to force reading the previous vowel as long
  • coler - probably from some /'ku.lur/ pronunciation already reducing the vowel to */'ku.lər/
  • kolour - ⟨c⟩~⟨k⟩ mixing was somewhat common then. And no, KDE did not exist back then, they did no lobby to spell the word with a K for the sake of a program that would only appear centuries later (Kolourpaint).

  Eventually as English spelling gets standardised, the word settles down as colour.

  Then around 1800, Noah Webster treats this word as if it was directly borrowed from Latin. Since in Latin it’s color, he clipped the -u. And his dictionary was popular in USA, recreating the mess, even after it was already fixed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨snek tree⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  D. cinnabari aka dragonblood tree:
  Image

  D. trifasciata aka snake plant:
  Image

  …the resulting hybrid would look nothing like a snake tree :(

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"may"⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  *Caution* the sexy girl in my avatar may have fire.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨it's true⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Aren’t the named tribes a subset of native Americans, so it can be true without the original statement being false?

  The original statement implies the technique was widespread across Native American groups. It’s almost certainly false for the ones here in South America; there’s a lot on terrace farming and slash-and-burn, but AFAIK nothing that resembles the companion system of the three sisters. (I wonder if it’s due to the prominence of subterranean crops. Taters, yucca, sweet potatoes.)

  The Haudenosaunee/Iroquois and the Cherokee/Tsalagi being related hints me it was something they developed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨it's true⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  While “Iroquoian” is still used as a technical linguistic category

  I’m guessing this won’t last for long, given some people already call the language family “Ogwehoweh” instead of “Iroquoian”. Example here.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨it's true⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Don’t speak please

  How am I going to phrase requests then? sudo make me a sandwich style?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Projeto de Lei 398/XVII/1 - O que acham?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Ah! Ok. Nesse caso, sim. Não haveria o problema da perda de privacidade. // Não havia “dark patterns” para ninguém. É isso?

  Exato! Evita-se o problema e a necessidade de resolvê-lo.

  Estou a ver é grande dificuldade em convencer as redes a aceitarem isso…

  Concordo. A oposição viria principalmente das redes grandes e comerciais; redes pequenas geralmente são mantidas e programadas por gente mais consciente, e não beneficiam-se tanto de táticas abusivas.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Projeto de Lei 398/XVII/1 - O que acham?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Não acho que deva haver restrição etária. Tampouco verificação do usuário. Acho que é a forma errada de lidar com este problema.

  A forma certa, na minha opinião, é proibir certas características das redes sociais. Como as listadas pelo texto da PL: autoplay, infinite scroll, notificações compulsivas, loot boxes, etc.

  Ou seja. O ônus de verificação simplesmente não existiria; nem para as redes grandes, nem para as pequenas. Haveria um ônus diferente, de mudar seus sistemas para não incluir características viciantes. Este segundo ônus afetaria muito mais redes grandes e comerciais do que redes pequenas e sem fins lucrativos.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Projeto de Lei 398/XVII/1 - O que acham?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Não sou português, então falo aqui como observador externo.

  Todos os problemas psicológicos e sociais mencionados no PL afetam adultos também; talvez menos, mas não de forma negligível. Então, se o objetivo do PL fosse realmente coibir dano, criaria restrições contra características danosas das mídias sociais. O ônus das leis sendo propostas estaria nestas redes, e não no usuário.

  Em outras palavras, o PL proibiria o que define no artigo 4º, alínea h (design aditivo); que Meta e similares mudem seus sistemas. Mas, ao invés de fazer isto, cria uma barreira etária onde o usuário ou fica proibido de usar a rede, ou deve provar que pode.

  Aliás, como o usuário provará que tem mais do que 16 anos, sem erodir o anonimato online? Anonimato é essencial para proteger tanto a privacidade como a expressão livre de todos.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Poor Jeremy⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Most terrestrial snails are hermaphrodites, so it’s more like they can only mate with their own sex. But it’s a bit more complicated than that; they typically produce sperm earlier than they produce egg cells, to discourage self-fertilisation, so you could argue they start male and end female.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Denominator, go Mercator⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This map is clipping a good chunk of the Southern Hemisphere. When you include it, you also notice the same distortion:

  Image

  Note how it looks like Antarctica (14*10⁶km²) is 1/4 of the globe, even if it’s actually smaller than South America (18*10⁶km²).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon creates a religion⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The continuity between Roman/Latin paganism and Christianity in special is rather evident for me: the fate of the dead, the idea of sacrifice, the mystery cults and all that “your god is to the East!”…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Generation Wars⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Nah, that’s the cartoonist, it’s TheJaredComix for a reason )))

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨🐍 🐦 🪹⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  B[r]azilian here. We do use “ué”.

  I am aware “ué” is also commonly used here, as the “also” in my comment shows. And my point still stands, this stuff is likely from Angola, given the genus in question is African.

  Ficou claro agora?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Generation Wars⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  James, listen to him!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨🐍 🐦 🪹⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Nah, likely Angolan. Angolan Portuguese speakers sometimes also use “ué”, and the genus in question is African.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Metal Exclusionary Radical Astronomy⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  To add to that: that gender you’re talking about is actually two distinct concepts, one social and another grammatical/linguistic. The later is more like a traditional way to refer to noun classes, when they also split humans based on social gender.

  Sadly my go-to example for that doesn’t work in English, because of the lack of grammatical gender.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Beer is for GIRLS⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Liking beer or not is a matter of personal tastes. However, if the beer tastes like “watered down unsweetened cocoa”, then it’s probably poor quality beer. Good beer should taste different from everything, even other beers.

  Dreadbeef recommended IPA; if you’re into bitter flavours, I also recommend it. There’s also sweet stouts if you like sweeter ones. (Juuust in case you’re here from LatAm, note mass produced pilsener are typically really bland and meh. A lot of people like it this way, that’s fine, but it would explain why you think it’s watered down cocoa.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Internet picture of a monkey⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If she is/was alive, what if she was the one vibe coding the AI? Then you’d get Ai Ai AI AI Ai Ai.

  …this is quickly becoming buffalo⁸ tiers of silly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Internet picture of a monkey⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re hired!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Internet picture of a monkey⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You know what, I got a brilliant idea:

  See, the chimp in my avatar is called Ai Ai. Was? I don’t know if she’s still alive; last news I could find about her are from 2005, when she stopped smoking. Anyway, wat if I had artificial intelligence to create a bunch of her pictures, and sold them as NFT? The “AI Ai Ai collection”, or Ai³ for short. I wouldn’t do this to scam a bunch of suckers, noooooo; I’d do it because you can get rich, if you “invest” into my collection: buy an Ai³ NFT now, for just 100 euros. Then resell it for a thousand euros, for mad profitz!!!

  […I’m obviously joking. C’mon, this summer is easily getting past 30°C, in a city where it used to snow once in a blue moon. I definitively don’t want to feed the global warming further with dumb crap like this.]

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Snitches get switches⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The nomenclature is really messy across countries and even sub-country entities. The Portuguese language Wikipedia even highlights the mess:

  Nomenclature diversity across countries. // Some surveys estimate protected areas in different countries and regions are called by at least a hundred names, and not uncommonly countries have their own categories of protected spaces, roughly similar to the protected space concept defined by the IUCN.

  From that I guess the restrictions associated with those spaces also change, and in some you aren’t supposed to remove local fauna and/or flora.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Breed back better, or whatever Biden said⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  What makes me lose my sleep:

  Trees are extremely iconic and we see a lot of similarities between them, but they’re mostly due to convergent evolution. Plants have been growing that stalk independently over and over and over. Crustaceans become crab-like, mammals become ant eaters, and plants become trees. *carcinisation intensifies*

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI-generated content in Wikipedia - a tale of caution⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m still reading the machine generated transcript of the video. But to keep it short:

  The author was messing with ISBNs (international standard book numbers), and noticed invalid ones fell into three categories.

  • Typos and similar.
  • Publishers assigning an invalid ISBN to the book, because they didn’t get how ISBNs work.
  • References "hallucinated"¹ by ChatGPT, that do not match any actual ISBN.

  He then uses this to highlight that Wikipedia is already infested by bullshit from large “language” models², and this creates a bunch of vicious cycles that go against the spirit of Wikipedia of reliability, factuality, etc.

  Then, if I got this right, he lays out four hypotheses (“theories”) on why people do this³:

  • People who ignore the limitations of those models
  • People seeking external help to contribute with Wikipedia
  • People using chatbots to circumvent frustrating parts of doing something
  • People with an agenda.

  ---

  Notes (all from my/Lvxferre’s part; none of those is said by the author himself)

  1. “Hallucination”: misleading label used to refer to output that has been generated the exact same way as the rest of the output, but when interpreted by humans it leads to bullshit.
  2. I have a rant about calling those models “language” models, but to keep it short: I think “large token models” would be more accurate.
  3. In my opinion, the author is going the wrong way here. Disregard intentions, focus on effect — don’t assume good faith, don’t assume any faith at all, remove dead weight users who are doing shit against the spirit of the project.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Public service announcement⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Now picture a gangster rapper dressed as Santa Klaus, with an eyepatch on one eye and a bottle of rum, saying “yo ho ho ho”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨boogs⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I know some folks down north who eat pan-fried ant butts. The ants in question are typically flying adults of the genus Atta (leafcutters), so specially large.

  That hints to me that one of the main reasons people prefer sea bugs over land bugs is size and texture. Like, you can extract the meat from a crab leg just fine, but you can’t do it with most insects, you’ll be biting through the chitin, you know?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why Japan’s internet looks weird — unless you live here⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Perhaps due to my heavy consumption of Japanese media, my views are biased. But frankly? I think Western design tendencies are the ones being weird here.

  Note quotes are out of order. Also, that by “West” I’m including the Latin America I’m from.

  “The West has an aversion to information density at times,” says Shoin Wolfe

  Indeed, in a country preoccupied with safety, information overload is a part of daily life.

  I think the difference is caused by advertisement: Western advertisement is so obnoxious, noisy, bossy, that it is bound to cause even more of a cognitive load than the Japanese counterparts. Western ads boil down to selfish arseholes screeching “are you too stupid to follow simple orders? I told you to consume it!” into your ears, while flashing loud lights. The following excerpt reinforces it:

  “For the most part Japanese advertising has been ‘soft-sell,’ relying on the use of celebrities, attractive graphics, music or catchy slogans to sell products.” This was contrasted with “hard-sell” advertising, which uses “analytical logic, product comparison, or ‘annoy and attract attention’ tactics.”

  And this might explain why people in the West avoid minor but still relevant info, while in Japan they seem to expect it:

  In 2020, Lawson learned the hard way that too much minimalism can backfire. When the convenience store chain redesigned its branded product packaging to embrace negative space, it faced swift and loud mockery on Twitter. Users complained the now uniformly beige products looked too similar and gave no indication of the contents.

  Moving on:

  “(In web design) I think that negative space is an aesthetic, Western idea,” says Wolfe. “In the West, with physical products and just design in general, they have this idea that more negative space equals luxury.”

  I have a better name for the so-called “negative space”: it’s “wasted space”. Space that failed to benefit the user.

  And while some waste is unavoidable, I think the current Western design tendencies boil down to “cripple your design until you’re offering the users the bare minimum, before they stop bothering with it”.

  “Because one symbol (of kanji) can compress what would be four to six letters in an alphabetic language, we grow up being accustomed to processing dense visual information very quickly,” says Akiko Sakamoto, a freelance UX designer and design strategist who works between Kyoto and Tokyo.

  Under ideal conditions, the difference in scripts shouldn’t be relevant here. Sure, kanji is more informationally dense per character, but as a consequence your average kanji has more strokes than your average Latin letter. Thus requiring larger sizes for comfortable reading. And I think both things cancel each other out, forcing both scripts to convey roughly the same amount of info per area.

  For the sake of example, contrast

  • ⟨F⟩ vs. ⟨E⟩
  • ⟨水⟩ vs. ⟨氷⟩ // mizu “water” vs. kōri “ice”

  People here in the Fediverse are probably seeing all four characters the same size, right? Note how the difference between 水/氷 feels way subtler than the one between E/F.

  …that is, under ideal conditions.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨No, I will not identify all the pictures with bicycles in them.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Sorry, I can’t hear what you said, because of all that *CLANK CLANK CLANK* noise you’re making. Clanker~

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon reality checks your fantasy⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Just make sure the cats don’t track it everywhere.

  I might, uh, err… have a bit too many cats to check if they’re tracking it. Sorry.